The Time Revision
by Courage and Love
Summary: (See The Time Association for the first story. This is a sequel.) After the apocalypse, Max has found a way to reverse the ending of the world by traveling back in time. Finding the Time Association, she joins forces with them, originally to stop the apocalypse, but soon they discover that there may be more in store than they originally thought. Crossover between 5 books.
1. It Continues

**This is the sequel to** ** _The Time Association_** **. I advise you to read those fifteen chapters, because this takes off right where it ended.**

 **Recap: Maximum Ride and her flock have just left the magical apartment belonging to the Time Association, a group of people who created with a time machine to stop disasters. Association characters are Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Jacob Portman, and Artemis Fowl.**

 **It is okay if you don't know them from their fandoms. No one knows all of them; it's fine.**

Artemis Fowl watched the six avian-human hybrids disappear down the street. Their leader, Maximum… she was an unusual person. He looked forward to researching more about the School, which he had been hacking recently. Nothing new there.

Jacob Portman closed the door behind him as the Time Association filed back into their rundown apartment. He, Harry Potter, and Percy Jackson plopped down on the plushy chairs, exhausted. Percy switched on the ancient TV.

Artemis did not wish to join them. He decided to go upstairs instead; the other faction of the Time Association would need to be spoken to.

 _Bang, bang, bang._

Artemis froze of the first step. Someone was pounding on the front door.

 _But someone finding us is highly unlikely,_ he thought. _We put magic on it. It is indiscernible from the brick wall outside._

Harry, Percy, and himself had worked together to make a spell for security reasons. It made their apartment accessible only with the proper assortment of spells.

Nevertheless, someone was banging on the door like his or her life depended on it.

Artemis glanced at his associates. They were as still as possible, watching the door, television forgotten.

" _Who is it?"_ Percy called quietly. Jacob smacked him on the head.

Artemis shook his head sharply at them. The pounding continued.

As a genius, it took Artemis only seconds to figure it out. There was only one person it could be. Which meant that the Time Association would fail in the future.

He strode over to the door and opened it.

"Good evening, Maximum. I take it the time traveling device works?"

 **Max**

I appeared suddenly in the alley where the Time Association's HQ was located.

I blinked, bewildered. It took me a moment to understand where I was in the past.

And then it hit me. I was actually _in_ the _past_. When everyone was alive. When the streets were crowded and noisy. When One Direction was the biggest news on TV.

But I couldn't spend a second thinking about that right now. Facing the grubby brick wall that looked like every other one in New York, I thought about what to do. I didn't know the magic spells that would open the door. So I did the only logical thing I could think of.

I knocked on the wall.

No answer. I banged harder.

Still nothing. My knuckles were beginning to bleed.

I thought about shouting, "Open up!" but then decided it would make me look a bit insane if someone happened to pass by. So I pounded harder on the wall.

Just when I was about to call it quits and find another way to save the world, the wall evaporated into an average-looking door. It swung open. I narrowly avoided slamming my fist into the person standing there.

"Good evening, Maximum. I take it the time traveling device works?"

It was the blue-eyed boy. I tried to remember his name. Artemis Fowl.

I realized what he'd said. "How'd you know I used the time thing?"

He took in my appearance with distaste. "We'll get you some… _fresh clothes…_ inside," he commented. "And it was obvious. Who else would know where we are, and I highly doubt your younger self would have forgotten something and needed to come back. You just missed her, by the way. And you are lucky you got the date correct. We wouldn't want you accidentally messing with Napoleon."

I blinked. "Okay…" I recalled my initial purpose in coming to the past. "I need your help."

Artemis stood aside. "Come in. We'll talk inside."


	2. Old Acquaintances

**Sorry for taking so long. Much more to come, and more character development, I believe.**

I was not planning on seeing the place again. All I had thought about before going back in time was stopping the apocalypse. But now that I was here, I managed to forget my priority for a moment.

The open concept place was exactly as it had looked a year ago (which I guess is now) with cracks lining the grey walls and plushy, colored beanbag chairs scattered around the coffee table in the center. The old television set was broadcasting a reality show.

The three other members of the Time Association were watching me with shock from the chairs. I must have surprised them beyond belief.

Surveying the rest of the room, I sucked in a breath. There was a real, live (well, not really) pizza sitting on the adjacent kitchen's counter.

"Would you like some?" Artemis asked, the perfect host. Apparently he had noticed me salivating.

I shook my head despite my growling stomach. There would be time to eat later.

"I presume you would like to tell us why you're here," Artemis added. Always a step ahead.

"Yeah," I said. And I told him my story.

Everything from the demented societies bent on destroying the world to the disastrous meteor strike. After I stopped to take a breath, one of the others butted in from the couch.

"How is all that possible?" _Percy Jackson_ , I realized after scanning my memory.

I stared at him. "You think _my_ story is crazy?" I said. "But your magical magic stuff isn't?"

"It's how I see it," he replied. "Like how you probably think mythology is, uh, a _myth_."

I didn't even try to decipher that sentence. Mythology?

One of the others seemed more shocked. I couldn't forget his name. _Harry Potter._ It was true. "How could anyone let that happen?" he whispered. He was probably referring to his _wizard_ folk. Please.

The last boy swore under his breath. "And I seriously thought I'd live to see twenty." I struggled to recall his name, but it wouldn't come.

"You all could really raise your expectations," I snarled. "This can't be the worst news."

I turned back to Artemis, who was, to my annoyance, smiling slightly. "So, can you people help?"

Artemis seemed to ponder my – and the future's – predicament. Finally, he said, "In a moment. I believe I know exactly who you need."

I didn't understand what he meant, but I followed him upstairs anyway. Synapses fired in my brain. I began to remember the events that had taken place a year before.

There was a… alien of sorts. I didn't know what to call her. I remembered her slamming into me as the flock and I were leaving this place, apparently thinking we were the enemy or something. I didn't like her.

But I remembered her as Artemis led me up the cramped stairs. And her three companions.

"Those _girls_ aren't here, are they?" I asked. Surely he would know what I meant. It had happened seconds ago in his time.

Whoa. Time travel is complicated.

But he knew who I meant. "Of course." He glanced at me. "Is there a problem?"

I gritted my teeth. "Not at all."

We reached to top of the steps. Artemis led me to the bedroom on the farthest side of the hallway. I had been in this room before.

It was where they had kept the time device.

I fingered the present-day one around my neck. Did they have theirs from the past?

My unspoken question was answered by the sight that awaited me inside the room.

A blonde girl with striking grey eyes was sitting on the bed next to another girl with an old-style dress on. Both of them whirled when Artemis opened the door.

An older-looking teenager with poufy brown hair was sitting on a white swivel chair. She was obviously Hermione Granger. I rolled my eyes at the insanity of it all.

And then there was the last person in the room. The one that was not at all human.

She had short, fiery hair and sharp features. I noticed she was holding the past version of the time machine in her hand. But that was not all. She was about three feet tall.

I stared at her. One eye was hazel and one was blue.

"What is _she_ doing here again?" she asked. Her glare could cut diamonds.

"This is a Maximum from a different time, Holly," Artemis replied. "And there is no reason to believe she is untrustworthy."

"Paranoia can save lives," I murmured. It was true.

The girl – Holly – looked surprised. But she shook her head angrily.

"Artemis," she said. "If this – whatever it is – is real, we shouldn't get caught up in it."

 _Whatever it is?_ He'd told her that we were bird kids? As soon as we'd left?

"Holly," he stressed, "it is a new situation now. The world ends in less than a year. She came back to fix it."

Holly seemed shocked at the news. The three other girls were more than stunned.

"How?" asked the grey-eyed girl.

"It's complicated," I replied icily.

"We need to contact the Lower Elements and anyone else who can help," said Artemis. "Somehow, they miss doing something in the future. We must make them aware of the danger."


	3. The Lower What?

**So, this chapter is in honor of me, because I could be doing a thousand things instead of this. So here you are! Max will learn the girls' names in time, don't worry.**

Based on the title of this chapter (go ahead and look – I'll wait) my reaction should be obvious.

"Lower _what_?"

"You do not need to know," replied Artemis. "Come downstairs."

The four girls and I followed him down the stairwell.

I was getting antsy. "Aren't we going to do something?" That was why I came to the past in the first place. I really hoped he hadn't forgotten.

"Yes, of course," he responded. He didn't say anything else.

Once we were all in the main room, he stood in front of the television to get the boys' attention.

"We need a plan," Artemis started once everyone was looking at him. "And we can't waste time arguing."

"Why?" I butted in. "The apocalypse takes place in a year. I think that's enough time."

Artemis shook his head. "You don't understand. Our enemies, such as Opal, are aware of our time machine and have devised ways to know when we use it. Coming here has made them find us. It is only a limited time before they track us down."

I blinked, thrown. "You're telling me that I unknowingly made a bunch of supervillains know where we are?"

"Not supervillains," he said. "A pixie, a titan, monsters, and Voldemort. Not supervillains."

I rolled my eyes. "They would've fit right in, though, don't you think?"

Artemis chose to ignore me. His first smart decision. "They will be on their way as I speak. That is why I have decided that, as there is more than one task at hand, it would be fastest to spit up."

"Like, boys go one way and girls the other way?" Percy asked. "Cause I've got a few problems with that plan."

"Unless those problems affect the future of the world, there's nothing you will do about it."

Percy shrugged. "Fair enough."

"Um, what exactly are we doing, anyway?" I asked.

Artemis faced the group of seven. "The girls and Maximum –"

"Max," I interjected.

"– Max," Artemis amended, "will go to the Lower Elements and convince them to hit the asteroid before it has the chance to reach our atmosphere. They should have the sufficient technology to blast it away from earth."

"Why wouldn't they have done that in the first place?" Holly spoke up.

"I can only imagine they will believe the asteroid wouldn't be able to wipe them out under the earth. You know the LEP."

"Is anyone going to tell me what's going on?" I asked.

Artemis looked at me. "You can get the full details with your group," he said.

Just then, the lights in the room flickered and dimmed.

"Looks like our time is up," he said. "Percy, Jacob, and Harry, follow me."

He led them out the door.

"If it makes you feel any better," Jacob said to me as he was leaving, "I don't have the slightest clue what's going on either."

The door slammed shut with a finality that made me shudder.

"So." The girl-fairy-person named Holly whapped her weird laser gun against the palm of her hand threateningly.

"So, Lilliputian," I replied with a smirk. "Where're we headed?"

Holly narrowed her eyes. " _You're_ headed somewhere real nasty if you ever call me that again."

One of the girls cleared her throat. "I understand if you want to battle each other," she said with annoyance, "but we need to get moving. How are we getting down there?"

 _Down there?_ I was going to ask what she meant when Holly answered, "I've got a shuttle. There's a nearby chute – I won't tell you where – that we can use."

"Chute?" I repeated. "Shuttle?"

"I was thinking we should test this girl first," added the other girl, ignoring me. "I'm not so sure we can trust her."

Holly smiled. Somehow it scared me more than the sentence. "I think that can be arranged."


	4. Shuttles and Ideas

**Sorry I'm late. We've been on vacation, and I've also been procrastinating. Then I needed to do some research on the apocalypse.**

 **But it's done now. Please let me know if something is wrong, because Love and I got into a fight, so she wouldn't edit it.**

Artemis led his group away from the magical apartment. There was no time to waste.

"So if the girls are going to stop the apocalypse, what are _we_ doing?" Jacob asked.

"There's more to this than just the meteor," replied Artemis. "We must make sure the groups Max spoke of will not try to go through with any destructive plans. We don't want to stop one disaster just to allow another that might possibly be worse."

"Wow," Jacob said, "but exactly how many people are planning world domination? We just can't catch a break, can we?"

"World _annihilation_ ," Artemis corrected. "And you'd be surprised to see how many organizations are out there."

Jacob rolled his eyes. "Well, how many? Since you obviously know."

Artemis mentally reviewed the information he had come across earlier. "At least two hundred," he said, "fifty of which have gotten off the ground."

Percy and Harry stopped ignoring them to gape. " _What?_ " Percy choked out.

"But we only need to worry about one for now." Artemis smiled slightly. "The Apocalypticas."

 **Max**

I was not a fan of Holly's "test." She had hailed a cab, and now we were standing in a remote part of a forest that was most certainly not New York City. In front of us was what appeared to be a space ship.

"This is a shuttle," Holly explained.

I just looked at her.

"And this is also how we're getting to our destination," she added.

"And…?" I supplied.

"And it also happens to be your test," she said. "I'm going to take us all on a little joyride while Emma does a background check."

She motioned to one of the girls. Not Hermione, and not Grey-Eyes. The one who suggested I be tested.

The girl named Emma glared at me. "Blindfold her," she said coolly. "You don't want her to be able to find Haven again after this."

"Don't worry," Holly said lightly. "You're _all_ going to be blindfolded."

Emma set off in a western direction. I didn't know where she could possibly be headed; we were in the middle of a forest.

"So what are we doing?" I asked, trying to ignore the apprehensive looks on the two other girls' faces.

"Getting in the shuttle, of course." Holly smiled.

 _Nuts_. I looked daggers at her. "Whatever it takes, then."

Holly climbed in first. She was the pilot, so it made sense. Hermione went in next, glancing at me pityingly before disappearing inside. Lastly, the grey-eyed girl went in.

"Since you know Holly and Emma, and you figured out Hermione, I guess I should tell you my name," she said.

"How'd you –" I began.

"It's obvious to anyone who knows anything about Harry Potter," she responded. "Only a complete idiot wouldn't be able to put the pieces together that she's Hermione."

She ducked inside the UFO, or shuttle, or whatever. Her head poked out. "Oh, and I'm Annabeth."

I nodded, tucking that info away. Once she had vanished inside, I followed.

The inside of the shuttle was crazy. It was all high-tech, something I hadn't seen in what felt like forever.

I took a seat on a soft cushion in the back next to Annabeth and Hermione. Unfortunately, the shuttle reminded me uncomfortably of a submarine.

"So, where are we going?" I asked.

Holly turned around in the pilot seat to grin at me. "Blindfold on, seatbelt buckled, then we talk."

I had no choice but to comply. Hermione tied the blindfold around my eyes.

This was it. If I was trusting these people, I was doing it now. Any one of them could silently kill me while I wore the blindfold.

But I sat still despite my doubts. They were my only hope to save the world, not to sound cheesy.

"Okay, prepare yourselves," Holly said. I could practically hear her grin.

I tried to prepare myself. I really did.

But nothing could have prepared me for the sudden G-force that made me rocket backwards as we took off.


	5. Voldemort Arisen

I'm not going to describe what happened. Needless to say, Holly had to clean out the inside of the shuttle.

"Is the test over?" I asked, pulling off the blindfold and trying not to throw up once more.

Holly smiled at me. "Oh, that wasn't the test. I was just passing time while Emma went and found out stuff about you."

I glared at her as we exited the shuttle, back in the forest again.

"There she is now," said Hermione. Like me, she and Annabeth had not exactly enjoyed the ride.

Emma was walking toward us, coming into the clearing.

When she reached us, she frowned. "You took your time. I've been waiting for hours."

"We were only in the chute for twenty minutes," Holly objected, but she edged closer to Emma. In a whisper that I could hear with my genetically-enhanced hearing, she added, "What did you find out?"

"You'd be surprised," said Emma. "But we can trust her for now. Just don't take any chances."

Holly nodded, apparently satisfied. Turning to me, she said, "Okay. Now we have to go, for real this time. Back into the shuttle!"

I groaned, following Hermione inside again.

"I'm with you on that," Annabeth said to me. "I'll be glad when this whole thing is over."

"All right, everybody!" Holly said from the pilot seat. "Blindfolds on, everyone this time. Just to make sure."

I waited until Emma, Hermione, and Annabeth had blindfolded themselves before asking one more question. "So where exactly _are_ we going? Or am I not going to know until we get there, as usual?"

Holly fired up the engines, lifting the shuttle into the air. "We're going to my home," she said. "I hope you like fairies, because if you don't you won't be welcomed very kindly."

She piloted the shuttle to a gaping hole in the ground that grew wider as it went down. "Now put your blindfold on, Max. And try to keep your vomit _inside_ your body this time."

 **Artemis**

"What are the Apocalypticas?" Percy asked.

"Only the potential destroyers of the world," Artemis replied calmly. "According to Max and some research, the Apocalypticas are a terrorist organization that will create a deadly virus to wipe out all 'unimportant' life on Earth. While Holly, Emma, Hermione, Annabeth, and Max work on stopping the meteor strike, we will be locating and abolishing the Apocalypticas."

Percy had only one thing to say to that. "Wow."

"But how are we going to find these people?" Jacob asked, crossing his arms.

"Like I said, I've done my research. We will have to get on a bus from here, and I will give more directions when we get there."

"Guys?" Harry asked, stopping in his tracks.

"What?" Percy responded, glancing up.

Artemis saw immediately. On the brick wall a street across from them, someone had spray-painted a message.

 _WE ARE COMING FOR THE TIME TURNER._

There was a smaller symbol painted next to the words. A triangle with a circle and a line inside it.

"What's a time turner again?" Jacob asked.

"It's the time machine," Harry said quietly.

"And what's the weird picture?"

Harry didn't take his eyes off the wall. "The Deathly Hallows."

"Our mysterious enemies want to show that they are wizards by using that symbol," Artemis remarked.

"How do you know that there's more than one?" Jacob asked, tearing his gaze away from the sinister message.

Artemis waved a hand. "Simple. They used the word 'we'."

Harry glanced up at last. "You know what this means. Right?" he asked.

Artemis nodded. It was about to make their adventure four times more difficult, but he was certain it was true. "We know Opal has risen again. This might mean others have, too."

"Such as?" Percy asked, obviously not wanting to know.

"Evil titans, monstrous creatures." Artemis shrugged. "And even the impossible."

Harry nodded, looking around apprehensively. "Like Voldemort."

Just then, the bus rolled up to its station, and the four boys gladly boarded.

 **In case you didn't know, the time turner is combined with every magical time travel way from each fandom, so it is a better time machine than anything else. This is why the villains won't just go get another time turner!**


	6. Trouble Brewing

**Okay. I'm so sorry for going on hiatus. But there was a problem with the plot that I couldn't work out, and it took me ages to decide what to do about it. But don't worry; I'm back now! I'll try to keep the updates coming, maybe one every week or so. Thanks for your patience!**

Holly piloted the shuttle down, down, down, with no fancy loops and spins this time. Maybe that was fine, but the speed definitely picked up so much that I felt I would have to disobey Holly's orders and upchuck all over her shuttle.

At last, I felt the rumbling engines slow to a halt as Holly landed.

"Where are we?" I spluttered, ripping off the blindfold. The others did the same.

"Haven," she replied. "Approximately seven hundred miles underground."

Annabeth muttered something under her breath.

Holly shot her a glare. "It is _not_ impossible. We're here, aren't we?" she said.

Annabeth met her gaze. "I'll believe it when I see it."

I glanced between them, noticing the tension, but Holly shook it off by saying, "I'm going to get the Council. You three need to stay here, and don't let anyone see you."

"That is crazy," said Emma, crossing her arms. "How do we know you'll bring them back with you?"

Holly rolled her eyes. "It's called _trust_. Like how we're _trust_ ing Max now.

"And anyway," she continued, "I know that you all would just leave the shuttle as soon as I'm gone. So I'm going to have to stop you from doing that."

"That's not fair," Hermione pointed out. "I would never do something so foolish."

Holly sighed. "Fine. I was going to just knock you all out until I came back, but I guess it's your death if you go out. And the world's, of course."

"Wait," I said. "Why _exactly_ can't we leave?"

"Not important," Holly said, brushing it off, as she walked out the shuttle's door.

Lightning fast, I blocked the door. "I'll walk right out of here if you don't tell," I growled.

Holly lifted her huge, weird, futuristic gun and pointed it at me, but she spoke anyway. "Listen to me, Mud Girl. You walk out there, and you'll be eaten alive. Then I will, too, because I brought you here. I'm pretty sure you know I'm not human, so you can guess no one else there is, either. So stay. In. The _shuttle_."

I lowered my arm. "I'm giving you sixty minutes," I said after a moment.

Holly nodded, as if she knew that was the best she could get, and left through the door.

 **Artemis**

Artemis Fowl laid out the rest of the plan on the bus.

"We're doing _what_?" Jacob asked.

"Are you kidding?" Percy added.

"You're mad!" Harry said, shaking his head.

Artemis waited patiently. When the others were done speaking, he said calmly, "I understand. But there's no other option."

In truth, he was uncomfortable with the plan as well, but it wasn't like they could just destroy a terrorist organization by putting everyone in jail.

"We have to," he said simply. "If you object, please go back to the safe room."

"Or Hogwarts," Percy added helpfully. The rest of them ignored him.

Harry just kept shaking his head. "There had to be another way," he said.

Artemis didn't meet his gaze. "If you have a different plan, by all means share." But they all knew, if he himself couldn't think of another plan, they were toast.

Harry didn't comment for the longest time. Finally, he stood up in his seat, earning glares from the civilians seated next to him.

"I refuse," he said firmly. "I don't care if it sets us back. Think of another plan."

Artemis realized that Harry was seconds away from getting off the bus. The only way to keep them all on the same side was to give in. It was times like this when he missed Holly, although he would never say so aloud. He would give her a call when he had time.

"Fine," he sighed, standing up as well. "I will do my best. But I cannot possibly meditate on such a crowded and noisy bus."

Harry scowled. "Then we'd better get off this bus, don't you think?"

The two of them walked to the front of the bus, Jacob and Percy following suit. "Um, guys?" Jacob asked. "What if Voldy… and that titan guy… and Koboi… and an army of shadow monsters find us?"

Artemis gave him an odd look. "Shadow monsters?"

Jacob waved a hand. "It's complicated."

Artemis gave his head a shake, getting back on track. "To answer your question, I believe they are saving up strength. It takes a lot of energy to come back from the dead."

The others vaguely wondered how he knew, but then they remembered that he had been dead before.

"Anyway, there are many questions unanswered," Artemis continued. "How did they manage to come back? Where are they now? Are they working together?"

"They are," Percy announced.

Artemis's dark eyebrows raised. "I presume you know this through demigod dreams?"

Percy nodded. "Kronos is visiting me. It gets seriously annoying."

Artemis clapped his hands together. "Perfect. A mistake on his part puts us a step ahead."

The boys staggered as the bus lurched to a stop. Recovering his footing, Artemis concluded, "We must hurry. I need some time and space, and you should hope that I will come up with something."


	7. The Fairy Council

**Here you go, the next chapter! My personal favorite!**

The leader of the Consortium faced her troops.

She fixed her perfect blonde hair. Oh, how she hated it this color. But it was a disguise that was necessary. Or at least it was, before she was recognized at first sight. What a waste.

After much haggling, they had decided to name themselves "the Consortium". At first they had been thinking of calling themselves "the Alliance" or "the Confederation", but these seemed just too government-y for their taste. Their leader had offered "the Consortium" and everything was settled.

Of course, she was not technically their leader. None of them would settle for second in command, or third, or even fourth. Indeed, each of them believed themselves to be the true leader.

But she was certain that they could not stand in her way once the battle was won, even the dark wizard. Once she no longer needed them, they would be taken care of. For of course, there was only one true queen of the world.

Opal Koboi showed her tiny teeth in a grin. This was going to be so much fun.

 **Holly**

Holly Short knocked loudly on the door to Foaly's Operations Booth, her gun strapped to her side. Yes, she was going to get the Council. But it would be so much easier to tell her centaur friend all that had happened first.

"Foaly! Open up!" she shouted, fast losing patience. If Foaly thought he could postpone Armageddon just to finish some stupid techno project, she swore she was going to drop-kick his furry behind out the specially-modified window.

Foaly's head popped up on the plasma screen mounted above the reinforced doorway. A hidden scanner in a potted plant nearby swept its gaze across Holly, giving him confirmation that it really was her and not some clever alien look-alike. Can't be too careful.

He grinned, pressing the button to open the door. "How's it going, Holly? Is your favorite Mud Man being too tough on you?"

Holly stormed into the Ops Booth. "No time to chat about that," she snapped at him. "I've got three impatient humans back in the shuttle and a very small amount of time to get this done."

Foaly's smile melted off his face. "I'm guessing those humans aren't Arty and his gang?"

Holly shook her head. "Not even close." She pulled off her helmet, tossing it onto a chair. "Got a second? I need to talk to you right now."

In short, when she told him about the asteroid (or meteor, Artemis, don't sue me), Foaly didn't respond quite the way she had been expecting.

"Yeah, I've been tracking that big boy for years," he said, sounding confused. "It's on a direct path to hit Earth. Why do you ask?"

Holly stared at him. "You know about it? And, what, that's it? Aren't you going to blow it out of the sky, or whatever you do?"

Foaly laughed. "Don't you think the Mud Men would get suspicious, Holly? They've been tracking it too, you know, just not nearly as long as I have. I can't just make it disappear. That would be like blowing up the moon, on a smaller scale of course, or maybe deleting Saturn from existence –"

"Foaly," Holly interrupted. "You're telling me that you know, and the Mud Men know, but no one's going to stop it?"

"Of course not," he replied with irritation. "They're going to blow it up. They're not _that_ stupid. Nearly, but not quite." At a glare from Holly, he hurriedly moved on. "I keep tabs on what countries are doing. It's regulation; make sure the humans know nothing and all that jazz. Anyway, Russia's got a nuclear bomb ready. It's best to let the Mud Men do their jobs and worry about our own problems."

Holly couldn't believe it. "A meteor hitting Earth _is_ our problem!" she cried.

Foaly wagged a finger. "Not true. I've calculated the size of the meteor, and it's only 2.5 percent likely that the Lower Elements will implode."

He clomped over to his computer station and brushed aside his messy papers, uncovering the old-fashioned keyboard. He tapped a few keys, and a holographic image of the Earth's layers appeared.

Picking up a carrot from his desk, he used it to point at the hologram. "See, Holly," he said, "the only way life on Earth could die at all, underground or otherwise, is if Russia somehow calls off nuking the meteor. And what are the chances of that?"

"Plenty," Holly muttered, but Foaly chose that moment to chomp on his particularly crunch carrot, muffling the word.

"So, what's up?" he said, turning back around from the computer. "I know Holly Short would never drop by on an important above-ground mission just to hear about the news. Why're you here?"

Holly decided it was the right moment to say, "I need to speak to the Council."

"Could this have anything to do with getting their permission to let me blow up the meteor?" Foaly asked, raising a hairy eyebrow.

"D'Arvit, Foaly," Holly said, "can't you wait until they get here?"

Foaly nearly rolled his eyes, but did as she asked and called the leaders of the LEP. In less than five minutes, the six remaining members of the Fairy Council were squashed into makeshift chairs in the Ops Booth, not looking too happy.

"Couldn't we do this somewhere else?" Chairman Cahartez grumbled grouchily, squirming in his plastic chair that was two sizes too small. "Preferably somewhere with some good vole curry?"

The other Council members murmured in agreement. _Apparently curry is more interesting than the fate of the world_.

Holly banished her annoyance, knowing that it would take a lot to get the Council to take action. She cleared her throat, and when no one paid attention, she grabbed a remote control from Foaly's desk and waved it threateningly in the air.

"Listen up!" she shouted. "If you all don't quiet down right now, I'm turning on the plasma tiles! I'm guessing no one wants to smolder worse than a stink worm in a saucepan!"

That made everyone go silent. Except for Cahartez, of course.

"Why'd you bring us to this tech heap?" he complained. "I was watching _Dancing with the Elves_ on LEBC. _And_ I had curry."

LEBC, also known as the Lower Elements Broadcasting Channel, was a widely popular network under the world. Holly almost wished she could relax and watch it, but there were more important things to do.

"Tech heap?" Foaly repeated, wounded. "I'll have you know, this is home to the most advanced technology in existence."

Cahartez ignored him. "And anyway, what could you want with us? Didn't we already help with that whole fiasco last time?"

Holly raised her eyebrows. "You mean last year?"

"Exactly!" Cahartez roared, gaining nods of approval from the Council. "It's been barely a year, and now there's something else to do?"

Holly had enough. "Guess what?" she shouted. "That's your job. To help people, to fix things. If you're going to be a curry-eating couch potato, then fine, but the world is at stake!"

There was silence again, and this time, Cahartez did not yell. His face had turned a pale green. "At stake?" he echoed. "No. No, no. Impossible."

Holly shook her head. "Not impossible. The apocalypse will happen, and we're the only ones in its way. I heard what will happen myself, and I need your help to stop it."

Cahartez still looked nauseous, but another Council member, Lope, spoke up, sounding confused. "Captain," he said, "how do you know if something'll happen in the future?"

Holly covered her mouth. D'Arvit. She shouldn't have said that; now they'd look into the time machine if they weren't too lazy, and No. 1 would get in trouble for giving it magic. Plus, when she'd hopelessly searched for help almost a whole year ago, she'd promised the others that she'd keep quiet…

"I don't for sure," she lied. "But I'm concerned. There's a meteor on a collision course with Earth, and I have a feeling it's not going to get blasted to smithereens in time."

Cahartez glanced at his fellow Council members, skin tone back to its regular color. "Captain Short," he said slowly. Most of the others of the Council gave him nods of encouragement, and he continued, "What if… that's a good thing?"

Holly blinked. She wasn't sure she understood. "Speak plain Gnommish, Chairman," she said. "What was that?"

A slow smile sprang to his face. "I said," he repeated, "it might be a good thing. The meteor hits Earth, we wait a few hundred years, and then we go back up to the surface. That way, a natural disaster makes room for the People to come back!"

Holly took a step back. "D'Arvit," she snapped. "Your head is full of holes, Cahartez. That's barbaric, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs their brain examined."

"Holly's right," said Foaly. "Although I would have put it in a way that definitely wouldn't cost me my job."

Suddenly, a loud burst of static came through the speakers of the Ops Booth. An officer's voice was relating information into his helmet.

"…An apparently empty shuttle has been found in the outskirts of Haven City. Permission to investigate?"

Holly's mismatched eyes widened. "Oh, gods," she whispered. "I have to go."

"Wait a moment, Captain," Cahartez ordered, watching her closely. "Do you know anything about this?"

Holly didn't have time to answer. She pulled out her Neutrino, aiming it square at Cahartez's head.

"Don't answer it," she warned. "Don't speak. I have to leave right now."

"Assaulting a government official," Cahartez muttered, not loud enough to be picked up by the LEP officer on the speaker. "Your badge is gone, Short."

"Hello?" the officer said again. "Permission or not? I've got Grub Kelp here, and he's getting antsy."

Holly could see it in Cahartez's face. He was going to answer, Neutrino blast or not.

At that moment, Foaly shouted, "Run, Holly!" and drew his hooves off the floor in his specially-made chair. Holly knew what was happening moments before he did it, activating her wings and hovering above the ground.

Cahartez and his supporters lunged at her, yelling, but it was too late. Foaly had activated the plasma tiles, and the six Council members were shocked into the air, the smell of burning skin searing into Holly's memory. The Council would wake up hours later, victims of Foaly's mind wipe, with no recollection of what had happened that day.

"D'Arvit," Holly said for about the tenth time that afternoon. "Thank you so much, Foaly."

And that was all the time she had. Shielding and hoping that her magic would last, she zoomed out of the Operations Booth as fast as her Hummingbird wings would allow.


	8. Peculiardom

**Okay, so this chapter explains Annabeth, Emma, and Hermione. I'm betting you have not read where Emma is from, so let me know if her explanation makes sense.**

 **Additionally, I have composed a poem as a simple warning:**

 **Something big is coming**

 **Of which I am not sure**

 **Someone bad is rising**

 **To claim what failed before.**

 **Something big is coming**

 **And with it chaos too**

 **So take this friendly warning**

 **From all of us to you.**

I faced the three girls in the shuttle.

"Okay," I said. "Looks like we're stuck here."

The others were still sitting awkwardly in their seats. I was standing in front of them, hands on my hips.

"Why don't we do something to pass the time?" Hermione suggested. I almost rolled my eyes at the insanity of that statement.

"That's a great idea," said Annabeth, looking at me. "We should all share something about ourselves that could be useful later. Not only would that make us gain each other's trust, but we will have more information against our enemies."

I raised an eyebrow. "You're kidding, right?"

"No."

Oh joy. "Fine," I said. "I have wings. Anyone care to top that?"

Emma looked at me thoughtfully. It was the first time she had expressed anything other than distrust towards me. "How did you get wings?"

I crossed my arms. No way was I going to tell them that. Even now, it was hard for me to talk about. And it wasn't like it was mandatory information, anyway.

"There was a place called the School," I found myself saying, mentally kicking myself. Yep, it takes a lot to get _me_ to talk. "They… made illegal experiments."

Emma's face seemed to soften, but it was probably my imagination. "You were an experiment."

I nodded. Trying to sound cheery, I asked, "Who's next?"

Annabeth cleared her throat. "I'm a demigod," she said.

Come on, folks; let's all say my reaction together: "What?"

"My mother is the goddess Athena," she continued as if talking about the weather. "There are alternate planes of existence where Greek gods exist. I'm not going to get into that now, but mythology is real."

There was silence for a moment.

"You're part goddess," I repeated disbelievingly.

Annabeth nodded. "In a way, yes."

I shook my head to clear it. This was just too confusing.

"May I go?" Hermione asked. When no one objected to say, _Oh, no, it's vitally important that I go right now_ , she continued proudly, "I am a former student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

I snorted. Emma glared at me, but I couldn't help it.

"This is just too cheap," I said, still laughing. "I can understand monsters and demons and magical unicorns, but book characters coming to life? I know, I know, but come on. Isn't it a little bit cheesy?"

"I was alive before we were written about," Hermione said in a hurt voice.

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. Same thing."

There was a pause. We turned to Emma, the last one to talk.

She glared at us, but seeing that we weren't going to let her go, she began to speak.

"Nobody knows my story. I was born 88 years ago, and after a series of events, a woman named Miss Peregrine took me to live with her and a group of other children like me. We lived in a _time loop_ – a place where a day repeats over and over again. We were able to live without aging."

"You're 88 years old?" Hermione asked incredulously. Apparently she hadn't heard this story before, despite having worked with her for who knows how long.

Emma nodded tightly. "It's complicated. We lived together, away from the monsters. Invisible creatures of shadows. We called them _Hollowgasts_."

I frowned. This was getting confusing.

"They hunted us. Their leader, Caul, was horrible. We got rid of him recently, but he killed thousands of us."

"Wait a second," I said. "Why did they want to kill you?"

Emma held out a hand. As I watched, a ball of glowing flame lit her hand on fire, bathing us in warmth.

Just as quickly, Emma extinguished it by closing her hand into a fist, leaving me with my mouth hanging open.

"What was _that_?" I asked.

"I have fire powers," she said. "When a person has powers like this – levitation, telekinesis, anything unusual – we call them _peculiars_."

I laughed drily. "Peculiars. Hahaha."

Emma didn't smile. "That's my story," she said. "I think we're done here."

Hermione frowned. "Excuse me, Max, Emma? Where did Annabeth go?"

I glanced around the shuttle. Annabeth was gone.

In a flash I remembered the small fight she had had with Holly earlier. _"I'll believe it when I see it,"_ she had said.

My stomach plummeted.

"Guys? I think she went outside."

 **Annabeth**

Annabeth just wanted to see the architecture. It was physically impossible to build a city this far underground. She needed proof.

As soon as the others had taken the bait of distraction, she had slipped out of the shuttle. The sight that awaited her was breathtaking.

High vaulted pillars arced above her, holding up the weight of a billion tons of earth. Electric lighting gave the appearance of false suns and stars, brightening the city.

And the city itself was a wonder. Annabeth couldn't describe it in words.

She stood there, staring at the marvelous city of the underground, losing track of time. Eventually, though, she was brought back to earth by the sound of footsteps.

"I'm going to complain about this, don't you think?" a whiny voice was saying.

"Hm," another, uncommitted voice responded.

"Yeah, you're right," the first continued. "They should make seatbelts way more comfortable. This complaint is going straight to the top." Then, seemingly to himself, he added, "I hope Trubs won't tell Mommy."

Annabeth ducked out of sight just in time. Two very short, heavily armed officers walked past.

Annabeth sighed in relief, but her relief was short-lived. She sucked in a breath.

The officers were walking straight toward the hidden shuttle.

One was talking into a sort of walkie-talkie. He was inspecting the shuttle, while the other one sat down on the ground in a pout.

Annabeth had to do something. But right now, she couldn't give herself away.

 _Holly_ , she thought urgently, _where are you?_


	9. Hannah Montana Is Life

**Holly was eating a sandwich.**

 **Only joking!**

Holly was flying as fast as she could.

She willed her Hummingbird wings to fly faster. There was no time to waste. The LEP officers were probably staring at their buzzing headsets in confusion right now. Protocol called for them to enter the unauthorized shuttle. Holly only hoped she reached them in time.

She flew past the everyday drone of Haven to the outskirts, where the shuttle was hidden. A couple of artificial pine trees and a few shanties obscured her vision, so she flew higher.

There. The shuttle was now in plain view, only visible at twenty feet, no more, no less. The structure of the faux trees made sure of that, just as she knew they would.

Two LEP officers were near the shuttle. Grub Kelp and another whom Holly didn't know or care to know at the moment. They seemed to be having a conversation.

Holly flew down to the ground, glad of her ability to shield. She had completed the Ritual barely a day ago. This close, she could now hear their conversation perfectly.

"This better not take long," Grub was saying importantly, sitting cross-legged on a plastic log. "There's a new episode of _Hannah Montana_ on this afternoon."

The other officer, previously looking bored out of his mind, perked up at this. "You watch _Hannah Montana_?"

Grub stuck out his lip in a pout. "So?"

The officer made the wise decision not to act surprised. "No reason. But when we go inside the shuttle, take caution. The Ops Booth didn't give us the go-ahead, and it sounded like a scuffle had gone down in there. We might have a situation on our hands."

Holly chose this moment to unshield.

Grub let out a yelp and tumbled backwards on his log, legs sticking into the air. Holly would have grinned in different circumstances.

"Captain?" the other officer asked with mild confusion, ignoring his partner. "Is something wrong?"

"Yes," Holly said authoritatively. "Foaly brought down communications. He's been working on a new project, wreaking havoc on the network as always. He sent me here to deliver the news."

The officer frowned skeptically. "What about the noises we heard on the line? It sounded like a stampede of elephants trampled the place."

Holly really needed to talk to the LEP trainers about teaching their officers better similes. "Foaly just crossed some wires with a television network," she said. "Everyone on the force got an audio of a dwarf bathing ritual. Very messy."

The officer didn't look convinced, but Grub interjected, "Does that mean we can go? I have some things to say to the Council about how they seal their envelopes. It took me four whole minutes to open my letter."

The other officer groaned. He would do anything to part ways with Corporal Kelp. "Fine. I could use a few hours off." He paused. "But before we leave… What's an unauthorized shuttle doing here?"

Finally, something Holly didn't have to lie about. "It's mine," she said.

The officer shrugged. "Okay, then." He activated his wings, shielded, and took off.

Grub scrambled off his log. "Wait for me!" he cried, running in the general direction of Haven and forgetting to shield.

Holly watched them go with a calm expression. Only when the tail end of Grub's clunky gear disappeared from her view did she bolt for the shuttle.

She wrenched open the door, casting her gaze upon the inside. No one was there.

"Oh, gods," she breathed, panicking. "Where did they go?"

 **Max**

"We're right here," I said.

Holly's gaze snapped up to the low ceiling. I supposed we made for a shocking sight: three teenage girls of varying ages strapped to the top of the shuttle, painted the beige of the ceiling. Except it wasn't paint.

"What did you _do_?" she whispered.

I pretended to think. "Well, let's see. We played a little get-to-know-you game, lost Annabeth, and found your police officer friends outside. It didn't take a genius to figure out that they were trouble, so we came up with a way to hide just in case they managed to get inside."

"You came up with a plan just like that?" she wondered.

I grinned. "We were still pretty noticeable, so Hermit turned us beige."

"It's Hermione," Hermione murmured crossly.

"Whatever." I swung down from the ceiling, feeling the blood reach to my toes again. Emma and Hermione came down carefully behind me, and Hermione preformed the counter spell thing. There was no way I was getting used to that.

Holly blinked. Then all of what I had said seeped in.

"You _lost Annabeth_?" she echoed.

"They didn't lose me."

We all pretty much jumped with surprise. Behind Holly in the doorway, Annabeth stood with her arms crossed.

"I just wanted to see Haven," she said simply. To Holly, she added sincerely, "You have a spectacular home. Thanks for showing up on time, too."

Holly seemed to smile then. She shook it off.

"Okay, Mud Maids," she said, climbing into the pilot's seat. "We have to get out of here. I'll give you the lowdown, and then we have to talk to the others."


	10. The Mystery Element

**What? The last chapter wasn't enough to coax a review out of you? At least let me know if you don't hate this story!**

The Time Association was barely off the bus when Artemis's fairy communicator rang.

He wasted no time in answering. "Holly?"

"Artemis," Holly's voice said at once. Artemis activated the camera, and her face appeared on screen. She was breathing hard and seemed to be in the middle of flying a shuttle.

"Yes?" he asked. The other members of the Time Association peered over his shoulder to see the screen.

"I talked to the Council," she told him. "They won't help."

Artemis nodded thoughtfully. "It makes sense," he said. "If Foaly couldn't or wouldn't do something about it in the future, then there is nothing we can do to change that currently."

Holly shook her head a bit on screen, not even trying to decipher that statement. A thought struck her. "Artemis? Won't we not be able to change anything anyway? A time paradox, and all that?"

Artemis smiled patronizingly. "That's where you're wrong, my friend. N°1's magic works like that. However, I altered our device to work in a different way. Therefore, there are no paradoxes to confuse you."

Holly gritted her teeth, but decided to move on. "Okay, good. I had to get out of there fast, but I'm going back after things have died down to talk to Foaly again. What's going on with you guys?"

"We are working on our strategy," Artemis said. "In the meantime, though, it seems we have another problem."

"Oh, yeah, tell her about the _dark forces gathering_ ," Percy said cheerfully.

"I can hear you," Holly said.

Artemis shot an irritated glance at Percy. "Yes. Well, we were given a _message_ from our little friends. We most likely do not have much time."

Holly frowned. "Opal and who else?" When he didn't answer, her eyes widened. "Oh, gods," she breathed. "They all came back to life, didn't they?"

"Every enemy under the sun, it seems like," Harry muttered.

"Every _relevant_ enemy," Artemis corrected. "We still do not know how they came to be alive again, or why. Don't you think it's odd that we all just happen to know them, Holly?"

Holly's face was troubled. "What do _you_ think's going on, Artemis?" she asked suspiciously.

He considered her question. "I believe there are unknown factors in this equation," he said finally.

Holly didn't get a chance to interrogate him further, because at that moment, a tremendous crash came from the back of the shuttle.

"D'Arvit," she cursed. "That Mud Girl is trouble. I have to go."

The screen blinked off, leaving the teens standing on a sidewalk in the middle of suburban New York.

"Goodbye, Holly," Artemis said, turning off the communicator.

 **?**

But of course Artemis Fowl was correct.

There was a mystery element. One that came into play at the very beginning.

She was the reason the villains had come back from the graves. She found their souls, plucked them from the ground, and whispered to them:

 _"Do not fail again."_

Her motives weren't known. Most didn't even hear her words. But the Dark Lord, the titan, and the malevolent pixie all understood her intentions.

Get revenge. Dominate.

And then, and only then, come find her.

 **Max**

I _accidentally_ broke the weapon rack in the shuttle. I don't know how. It just happened.

"Don't lean on things you know nothing about," Holly snapped when she heard the crash. "Got it, Mud Girl?" She paused. "Or should it be Mud _Bird_?"

"I'll take Mud _Mutant_ ," I suggested helpfully. "Or, hey, just drop the Mud. And maybe add, like, Air in front or something."

Holly growled at me. "I was on the phone, Max," she said. "And guess what? We have a new destination."

I folded my arms. "Does it involve travel by UFO again? Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm claustrophobic, and this isn't helping."

Holly gave me a sideways glance. "You have claustrophobia?"

I shrugged. "The School. Cages. Being a mutant experiment will do that to you."

"Oh," she said. "I'm a bit claustrophobic myself, actually." Her voice seemed a bit friendlier, to my surprise. "Anyway, since we've got nothing else to do right now, I decided that we're going to meet up with the others."

"Do they know?" Emma asked, leaning against the weapon's rack. Which, I might add, didn't collapse when _she_ leaned on it.

She and Annabeth were looking at us like we were a mildly interesting tennis match. Hermione just looked irritated.

"Well, no," said Holly. "But I talked to them, and they sounded like they could use a bit of help."

"And yet you forgot to mention that you wanted to drop by," I said skeptically. "Really, fairy?"

"Artemis would think it's safer to split up," she snapped at me. "I can't deal with his arguments right now."

Hermione, Emma, and Annabeth all stared at her. "What do you mean, split up?" Annabeth asked. "Is there something we should worry about?"

Holly's eyes were huge (even more so than normal). "We'll talk when we get there," she said finally, in response to our expectant gaze.


	11. Avada Kedavra

**Sorry for the three-week hiatus. Also, a side note: I'm not sure what color the C-Cube is, because the American version calls it blue and the European version says it's red, apparently. Since it's a European book, I'm going to go with red.**

I was absolutely and completely annoyed.

Holly had gone back to piloting the ship, while Hermione had a book open on her lap, lost in its pages. Emma and Annabeth were inspecting the fancy machinery.

"Look at this sophisticated technology!" Annabeth was marveling, holding up what looked to be a red, electronic cube.

Holly's head whipped around from the front to glare at her. "Put that down."

Annabeth raised a blonde eyebrow but did as she asked.

Emma, meanwhile, was inspecting the _seatbelts_. A curl of her magic-fire-whatever wound around her finger but failed to melt the belt's metal clasps.

This apparently was an unprecedented discovery, because she pulled back with big eyes. This time, she lit her whole hand on fire, which was quite an alarming sight, and scorched the seatbelt completely. The buckle didn't melt, but the seatbelt straps curled in the heat and blackened.

Hermione looked up, probably feeling the heat, and recoiled with a shout, since she was unfortunately seated right next to the smoldering seat. "Emma!" she cried, holding her book away from the flames.

Emma apologetically snuffed out the fire with her hands, but not before the shuttle's sprinkler system went off.

Hermione wailed, making a futile attempt to save her book. Annabeth gasped with surprise as the water hit her. I gritted my teeth and sat through the shower, too irritated with them to care about being wet.

The shuttle jolted suddenly, and Holly marched out of the cockpit, her face red with rage.

" _D'Arvit!_ " she snapped to all of us. "Why can't you Mud Maids just sit still for twenty minutes! Is that so hard?"

She spotted the charred seatbelt, and her face became livid, then miserable.

"Why?" she moaned to herself, her posture slumping. "Now I'll have to get a replacement seat… I just want this to be over."

I cleared my throat.

"Sorry," Emma said shortly. "I'm just not used to this stuff."

Holly sighed, lifting up the electronic cube that Annabeth had been looking at earlier. She stared at it affectionately for a moment before saying, "It's okay. I'm just stressed, that's all."

I cleared my throat again. This time, everyone looked at me.

"This is all very moving," I said, "but we have a place to be, and the apocalypse isn't anywhere near stopped. Do you remember why I'm here?"

"To annoy us?" Emma muttered under her breath.

"Nope." I was tired of sitting around. Tired of listening to their banter, tired of watching them in silence. Heck, I'd been quieter than Fang on this trip.

I met their gazes with intent. "We need to get those other Time Association people and fix this mess. I don't care what happens, because if you haven't noticed, _everyone dies where I'm from_. Me and my flock are the only ones left, and I made the choice to come back to a time when no one cares about us. I'm sacrificing my freedom to save the world. So let's get it over with already."

There was silence for a full two seconds. Then Holly's gaze dropped to the ground.

"I guess it's time to tell you what we're up against, then," she said quietly. "Sorry, Mud Girl, but saving all life on or under Earth might take a while."

 **?**

Lord Voldemort faced the Consortium. He himself was not a part of _them_. He was much higher than them, and would never consent to sharing the role of leader. In fairness, though, neither would the fairy or the Titan.

The "Consortium," as it had been named, was their army.

The Dark Lord scanned the ranks. The simple " _Lumos"_ spell he'd used showed what normal light couldn't: hundreds upon hundreds of invisible monsters, undetectable except for their shadows. This army, the Consortium, was the gift of the one who had helped him rise.

Behind Voldemort was the Lord of Time, the Crooked One, Kronos. Kronos was a worthy opponent, but Lord Voldemort knew he would defeat him in time. When he no longer proved useful.

In the swivel chair, looking very out of place with her petite looks, the pixie Opal Koboi giggled, clapping her tiny hands together.

"We should find them right now," she suggested cheerfully. "Leave a little present for them, perhaps. Then capture it on camera as they meet their demise!"

Lord Voldemort considered it. It was about time they destroyed their enemies and took control. But there was one major flaw in her plan.

She was in it.

Turning regally to face her in her chair, his black robes billowing, Lord Voldemort lifted his wand.

" _Avada Kedavra_."


	12. A Bit of Holly Drama

**Sorry for not updating in a while. There were the holidays, I was too busy, and then I got sick.**

 **Anyway, this chapter was tough. It's pretty much a filler chapter, and I just realized I know nothing about NYC. Plus, my plans are at the moment plot-holey at best and way too OOC at worst.**

"You're telling me that a bunch of evil movie villains are back from the dead and want to kill us?" I demanded.

"I wouldn't call them ' _movie villains,'_ " Holly grumbled. She had gone back to piloting, but we were crowded around her chair.

" _Book_ villains, whatever," I snapped. "That doesn't change the fact that they're evil, all-powerful creatures bent on world annihilation."

Holly widened her eyes in mock astonishment. "Is it world _annihilation_ now? What happened to world domination?"

I ignored her. "So what do we do? Stop Voldy and company?"

Holly shook her head, pulling the shuttle out of its steep ascent out of the chute. "We need to finish your mission," she said. "Then you can go back to your time, and you won't have to worry your feathery little head about them."

I glared at her. There was no way I was going to leave without seeing this through.

She obviously understood my expression, because she sighed. "Look, Mud Maid. I get it, but honestly, it will be easier to win against them without you. Don't take it personally."

"How could she?" Annabeth muttered.

I clenched my fists. "Holly, I'm not going to leave you all to fight a noseless supervillain, a psycho fairy, and a creepy titan _thing_ by yourselves. End of discussion."

"Gods, Max, you sound like Artemis," Holly groaned, throwing her hands in the air. "Fine. You can stay for now, but we should still take care of the meteor before we decide what to do about Opal and her pals. You still have the modified time turner from your time, right?"

I glanced down at the device hanging from my neck under my windbreaker. "Yep."

She sighed, slumping in the pilot's chair. "Great. Now everybody get out of the shuttle. We're above ground now, so we should find the others."

 **Artemis**

The others in question were searching for the quietest place in the Big Apple, which was proving to be a very difficult task.

"There's no peace and quiet in this whole _city_ ," Jacob complained as they walked down Fifth Avenue for the seventh time.

"We've been living here for a month," Harry added sullenly. "We should know where to go by now."

"Speak for yourself," said Percy. "I've lived here my entire life. There's just nowhere near here where we can stop without looking suspicious. Well, except for the 'Be a Star' doll store."

Artemis stopped walking. "It's lunchtime," he said.

Percy frowned. "So?"

"It's not ideal, but I suppose I could come up with something while we eat lunch."

" _And,_ we're very hungry," Jacob snorted. "You're supposed to be a genius, you know."

Jacob was spared Artemis's retort by the fairy communicator, which beeped at that moment.

"Yes?" Artemis answered with a hint of confusion.

"Quick question, Arty," Holly said from the other end. Her voice was a bit too light, a bit too high. "Where… exactly are you?"

"Holly. Please tell me you aren't coming here."

"Just answer me," she replied.

"East 26th street," he responded smoothly. "May I ask why you need to know?"

"No reason," she answered with a wink, but Artemis could read her easily.

"Please do not come, Holly," he said, but by then she had hung up.

Percy was giving him an odd look. "Why didn't you tell the truth?" he asked. "We're still on Fifth Avenue."

Artemis picked up his pace, forcing the others to keep up. "If I know Opal, she will target us first. And if Holly, Emma, Annabeth, Hermione, and Max come here, they will be in danger as well."

"Huh," Harry noted. "Ever hear of safety in numbers?"

 **Max**

Holly slammed the fairy communicator onto the dashboard.

"What happened?" I asked from the back of the shuttle.

Holly had just gotten off the phone (or whatever it's called) with Artemis. She was practically steaming.

"That filthy Mud Boy lied to me! Again!" she shouted, getting out of her seat and storming to the exit of the shuttle. We were parked, if that term can be used for a spaceship, in a forest right outside of Connecticut. I knew this because Holly's scanners showed our precise location on a digital map.

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, looking up from the book she was reading.

Holly took a deep, not-very-controlled breath. "He said they were on _26_ _th_ _street_. As if Foaly never put a tracker in his fairy communicator."

"You know," I said, "I'm not really surprised anymore."

Emma nodded. "You have a point."

Holly ignored us. She marched to the back of the shuttle, lifting up some heavy equipment and slinging it over her shoulders.

"These are called Hummingbirds," she said. "Everyone, you have to take a pair. We're going to fly to Central Park."

Hermione sent a questioning look my way. I shrugged. _Just go with it._

Emma took a pair of electronic wings first, followed by Annabeth, who studied them with something similar to awe before sliding them on.

"Oh, well," Hermione sighed before following suit.

When everyone turned to look at me, I rolled my eyes.

"I already _have_ wings," I pointed out.

"Oh. Right." Holly looked as if she had forgotten. "That makes things easier. Let's go, Mud Maids."

One at a time, they debarked from the shuttle.

"Come on, then," Hermione said as she exited last.

I sighed, wondering for the thousandth time that day what insanity I had gotten into, and unfurled my wings.


	13. A Filler Chapter

We flew and flew, and soon New York City came into view. I tried not to notice the stares I was getting from the others.

They obviously had never seen anything so strange before. My wingspan was about three times those of the mechanical wings. That, plus my stunning plumage, kept on drawing their attention throughout the whole trip.

"It's so odd," Hermione remarked in a whisper at one point from behind me.

I turned sharply in the air to face her. She started, fumbling with the controls so she wouldn't hit me.

"What's odd?" My voice was dripping with sarcasm. "The wings? Flying a hundred feet up in the air? The fact that I'm a mutant and you're not?"

Hermione glared at me. "I _apologize_ ," she snapped, "but I meant it. I have never seen anyone, wizard or muggle, with real wings before, but I'm sure everyone would want them."

I was about to retort, but then it struck me that she was actually complementing me. "Maybe so," I said, "but no one would want the baggage they come with, trust me."

"Don't you wish you could be normal?" Emma asked, her gaze unfocused. I glanced at her in surprise; none of the others had been listening to our conversation, or so I'd thought. "Wouldn't you want to give up your uniqueness to avoid the pain?"

Something about her tone gave me the feeling that she knew what she was talking about. Maybe something had happened to her in her past involving her fire powers.

"No," I replied honestly. "Flying is the most amazing feeling in the world. Being a mutant is how I got my family, and I wouldn't give them up for anything."

Holly smiled sympathetically at me, angling her electronic wings closer to the rest of us. "Flying is amazing," she agreed. "There are some days when I wish I had wings, too."

That sort of surprised me, to be honest. "But you're an elf; you have super-technology. And you have magic powers, right?"

Holly shrugged. "They say elves used to have wings, but as of now, sprites are the only natural flyers."

My eyes widened. "Sprites?"

"Oh, look, we've reached the city," Holly said hurriedly, and my eyes narrowed. She peered down at the streets of gray through the smog. "Ugh, I hate New York. It makes me wish the humans would just blow themselves up, to get rid of one less abomination in the world. Come to think of it, all of America makes me sick."

I rolled my eyes. "Then why did you all make your secret base here?"

"Because no sane fairy would ever follow us here," Holly said, wrinkling her nose. "But seriously, the Mud City is an awful place."

"Is that your fairy name for NYC?" I asked.

"No, the fairy name for New York City is too terrible to say aloud," she replied.

Annabeth cleared her throat. "Guys," she said. "We're here."

I glanced down. Sure enough, we were officially in the Big Apple.

"Let's land," Holly commanded, touching down in the most remote part of Central Park. Luckily, no people noticed us descend.

Then Holly did something that took me completely by surprise. Starting with her limbs and then her body, she flickered out of visibility.

I recoiled, jumping back with a yell. Hermione shushed me by covering my mouth with one hand.

"Calm down, Mud Girl, I'm just invisible," Holly's voice said from thin air, coming out with a faint hum, like she was speaking in front of a fan. "It's called _shielding_. One of a fairy's tricks, so don't go blabbing about it to anyone."

I calmed down enough to pry Hermione off me, glowering. "Thanks for _telling_ me. Only, why?"

"She's not human, obviously," Annabeth said. "It's not like she can just walk around New York like that."

"Thank you, Annabeth," Holly's voice said approvingly. "But you forgot one thing."

I heard a small beep, and suddenly Emma, Hermione, and Annabeth's mechanical wings exploded.

Luckily, the girls had taken them off as soon as we'd landed. The mini explosions left scorch marks in the ground.

Annabeth's eyes were shocked, but she nodded. "Good thinking."

"Now let's go," Emma said coolly, as though things spontaneously combusted on a regular basis.

She began walking out of the forest, but I couldn't tell if she was leading, or if Holly was just invisible in front of her.

We walked for some time, and it made me itch to snap out my wings and move a little faster. Because, seriously, this was so boring.

Annabeth fell into step with me after we exited the park. Her eyes were worried.

"I'm hoping that Kronos is the one who came back for Percy and me," she said quietly. At my confused glance, she added, "The titan lord, from before the Olympians. We beat him once, when we were 16. But if our enemies are coming back, he's probably not the worst."

I frowned at her. "What's the worst?" I wasn't terribly sure I wanted to know.

Annabeth shrugged. "Titans created the gods, right? Do you know what created the titans?"

I dipped into my reservoir of knowledge about ancient deities, and found that I didn't have one. I shook my head helplessly at her.

"The Earth," she responded. "Mother Earth… Gaea. She isn't so nice."

That was all the time we had, because I suddenly walked into an invisible wall.

"D'Arvit, Max!" Holly's voice said angrily. "I'm following the Mud Men on a tracker. Once we get to them and make them not mad at us –"

"You mean you," I interjected.

"– we can figure out what to do about this mess," she finished, ignoring me.

Hermione looked up suddenly. "Could I go to the library? There's something I absolutely _must_ figure out."

If Holly had been visible, she would have looked taken aback. "What?"

Hermione waved a hand. "I'm not positive yet," she said. "But is there a library near here?"

I remembered that, a lifetime ago, the flock and I had visited a library in New York – _the_ library, in fact. My memory was a bit foggy, but if I recalled correctly, it was only a block away.

"I think there's one down the block," I said slowly, and Hermione immediately bolted in that direction. "Wait!"

"Hermione!" Holly called angrily, but passersby on the street gave us odd looks, so she quieted. "We shouldn't split up," she muttered to us. "I don't know what she's gotten into her head, but it's dangerous to go alone."

"She'll be fine," Annabeth said. "She has a wand, after all."

"But so do our enemies," Emma whispered, leaving us all with an uneasy silence.

"Should we go after her?" I asked after a moment.

Holly was quiet for a moment. "…No," she said. There was a pause. "The others are exiting a McDonald's two streets away, according to the tracker. Emma, how about you go after her, just in case? We'll meet you at the library later."

Emma nodded, leaving in Hermione's direction, and the rest of us continued walking. I fingered the time turner around my neck. This journey so far had brought a lot more trouble than I'd asked for.

 **So that was a filler chapter. I'm annoyed with myself, because this scene is just dragging on and on, but it'll be over soon. Please read, review, and enjoy! (And review again, just because.)  
**

 **~Courage**


	14. Talking in Circles

**Sorry for procrastinating, but no one's reading this anyway.**

Emma pushed through the grand double doors of the NYC library, marveling at the polished stone and high arches. She didn't have time to get used to it, though, because her priority was to find Hermione Granger.

Emma walked to the back of the library, passing many people. Unlike the few libraries she'd ever visited, this place was huge and crowded, with humming pieces of technology in the center of the first room. Computers, she supposed, although they looked different than the ones she'd seen so far.

This was one of the reasons that it had been hard for her to leave the past. She had been stuck in the past for decades and decades, and now the world was a stranger to her.

Emma spotted Hermione down an isle titled "Middle Grade". Hermione was flipping through some books fervently, a pile of significantly older works at her feet.

Emma walked over to her, standing with her hands on her hips. Hermione looked up from her seat on the floor in confusion.

"Are they upset?" she said anxiously. "I'm sorry, but I just _had_ to see if I was right."

Her face was somewhat pallid, now that Emma noticed. Then she wondered if people nowadays used the word _pallid_.

"And it seems that I _am_ ," Hermione said gravely. "The others are in horrible danger."

 **Max**

We trooped down Something-Avenue, and pretty soon we reached the McDonald's restaurant where Holly had said Artemis, Percy, Jacob, and Harry were. Sure enough, her magic tracker thingy hadn't lied.

Artemis was saying something to the others when we got there.

"I believe I have a plan for how we should proceed."

Holly rolled her eyes, walking around the corner to face him. "A _plan_ , Artemis?"

Annabeth whispered, pulling me back around the corner and out of sight, "Let's just hang back here."

Artemis didn't look surprised; rather, his shoulders drooped and he sighed. "Good to see you too, Holly. What do you mean?"

Holly frowned. "Did you know I was coming?"

Now Artemis smiled slightly. "Of course. Did you think I didn't know about the tracker?"

Holly glared at him, looking irritated. "Stupid Foaly," she muttered, then to him, she said, "What do you mean, 'What do you mean?'"

I blinked, trying to figure out that statement, but Artemis replied, "You said, 'A _plan_?' Was there a reason for your mocking tone?"

Holly snorted. "For as long as I've known you, you've been the one to come up with the _plan_. I should have bet money that you'd be talking about it the exact moment we found you."

Artemis sounded slightly offended when he spoke next, although I couldn't understand why he cared. "Where are the others and Maximum?"

"Yeah," put in Percy, who hadn't spoken this whole time. "Where's Annabeth?"

There was a pause, where I assumed Holly was turning around and finding us missing, and then Annabeth pulled me around the corner and tackled Percy.

I was surprised, but Harry whispered, " _Boyfriend and girlfriend_ ," so I didn't stare when they hugged each other.

"Where's Emma?" Jacob demanded, looking from face to face. Annabeth broke free from Percy to answer him.

"She's with Hermione at the library." Annabeth glanced at Percy worriedly. "Hermione kind of just bolted, saying there was something she had to do, and we didn't want her to go alone."

"Sounds like Hermione," Harry said.

Jacob cursed. "Why didn't you all go with her?"

Annabeth shrugged helplessly.

This was going on too long. I curled my hands into fists, ignoring the Happy Meal poster in the window behind us that somehow detracted from the situation.

" _Guys!_ How about instead of wasting time talking about all this, we actually _go_ to the library and get them?"

Annabeth, Percy, and Jacob looked like they'd forgotten I was there, to my extreme annoyance. Artemis, Harry, and Holly just turned their attention to me.

"Brilliant plan," Harry said at last. "Why doesn't _she_ become leader, huh, Artemis?"

Eventually, I corralled them into walking in the general direction of the library, which they did with plenty of talking. I was getting a migraine serious enough to rival what Angel gave me constantly.

It was because of all that chatter that I failed to notice the shadows.

Jacob was just saying, "It's getting late, we should hurry," when he stopped dead in his tracks.

Annabeth bumped into him. "What is it?"

"This is not good," he said. "Oh, no."

He actually said something a lot worse, but I'm editing that part out.

"What?" I asked tensely, already in fight-or-flight mode. I unzipped my windbreaker for a faster getaway, if needed.

"Hollows," he said.

"Huh?"

His impatience with me seemed to be ruled out by worry. "Monsters. Creatures of the dark. They're invisible except for their shadows, and they are always deadly. But I thought they were all dead?"

"Yeah, well, it looks like people are coming back from the dead lately," Holly grumbled, making a move as if to grab her gun before forgetting that it wasn't there.

I scanned the busy street of New Yorkers. Here and there, I thought I saw an unjustified shadow slip over a patch of fading sunlight, but it was probably just my imagination. "How can you tell?"

"It's complicated," Jacob said. "I have this… feeling. You know how Emma can use fire? I can... _work_ with Hollows."

"Work with?" I repeated. "Can you make them go away?"

"I can try –" His words were drowned out by a new, colder voice.

"You cannot control these Hollowgasts. They are under my control now."

"Is that Voldemort?" I asked, half joking.

"No," said Percy, and Annabeth answered, "That's Kronos."


	15. Gaea

**Okay. Here it is: the next chapter. It's seriously short, but I couldn't bring myself to write more.**

Emma stared down at Hermione and opted to go with the most direct response.

"Explain."

Hermione held up the book in her hand. "We didn't know how all these horrid creatures and evil things came back, right?" she said. "This explains it."

Emma took the book. Flipped through it.

"Someone's pulling strings," Hermione continued. "And when the others were talking, I realized what we're up against."

"What?" Emma asked in a low voice, trying not to sound too annoyed.

"The Earth itself."

"That doesn't make sense." Emma couldn't keep the irritation from her voice.

"Oh, but it does," Hermione said eagerly, taking the book back and flipping through it herself. "In Greek mythology, Mother Earth was called Gaea. According to more _recent_ history, Gaea is evil and destructive. And, apparently, she once _gained control_ of the _Doors of Death_."

Emma felt a chill that had nothing to do with the vent above her. It didn't take a genius to know what "the Doors of Death" were.

"Simply put, Gaea must want revenge." Hermione chewed her lip thoughtfully.

"She wants the time turner for that reason?"

Hermione frowned. "I think it's complicated. The Ministry's Time-Turners were all destroyed, so ours is not only the most powerful, but the only one left in the wizarding world. Gaea must want it for a reason, though."

Emma copied her expression. "The difference between ours and the Ministry's – what is it?"

Hermione seemed surprised. "Brand name," she said, "and spelling difference."

Emma shrugged, but suddenly the young witch tensed.

"Something's wrong."

Emma turned around, but it was too late. The library was empty, and all the lights had mysteriously gone out.

Hermione brandished her wand. "We have to leave," she hissed. "Now."

Emma lit a fireball in each palm. Hermione, to her credit, was not fazed.

Then they heard the voice, coming from outside.

" _You cannot control these Hollowgasts. They are under my control now."_

Hermione cursed. "Come on."

Emma didn't hesitate, following her friend into the New York street.

 _I hope Jacob and the others aren't dead,_ she thought. _Please, let them be alive_.


	16. The Shadow Army

I didn't see how this could get any worse. We were outnumbered by invisible monster-things, an evil disembodied voice was speaking to us, and none of the innocent bystanders pushing past us on the sidewalk seemed to take any notice.

"Kronos isn't the worst-case scenario," Annabeth said softly. "We've dealt with worse."

"Yeah," Percy said louder than her, holding her hand. "Kronos's mom is seriously _way_ scarier."

The voice did not reply, but Jacob hissed, "Would you be quiet? You're forgetting about the Hollows." He glanced nervously around the crowded street, as if he could see them. Which maybe he could.

"How scary can they be?" I asked, well aware that I was probably jinxing it.

"You'll get a chance to see for yourself," he said ominously. "They appear to you when they eat you."

Holly took out her Neutrino blaster, aiming it uncertainly at the street. A few people gave her looks, and it occurred to me that they didn't know that we were in trouble. All they saw was a weird-looking, unusually short girl pointing a futuristic gun at the taxis passing by. Holly hesitated at the attention before putting her Neutrino away.

"D'Arvit," she muttered. I wondered what that meant. "We can't fight without looking suspicious."

As if on cue, a group New Yorkers on the other side of the street suddenly screamed bloody murder. Before my eyes, I saw the tearing, ripping, as they were eaten right in front of everyone.

That was when the Hollowgasts made themselves known.

I felt myself go rigid. _Not possible._

But suddenly, as the screams rose across the street, huge, reptilian creatures began appearing. Everywhere.

One upended a tour bus. There were swarms of them.

They were humanoid, sort of, but there was no mistaking them for human. Their flesh, dark as shadows, was stark against the red blood coming from the pedestrians. And then there were the tentacles.

Tongues. Tentacles. Not sure which.

They had a million of them. I watched with horror as one stuck out a tentacle longer than my wingspan and lifted a screaming person in the air.

I'm not going to go into details. The person is no longer living, and no longer has a head.

Harry swore, holding out his wand. "Not good."

"We have to do something," Percy hissed, rummaging through his coat pocket. His hand emerged with a pen.

Now, actually, after my first encounter with the Time Association, I had re-watched the Harry Potter movies, and the first Percy Jackson one. So, if my information was correct, that pen in his hand was actually a magic sword if you uncapped it.

I almost face-palmed with the ridiculousness of it all.

"Innocents are dying," Holly said decisively. "I'm going in there."

She pulled out her Neutrino again, this time able to see the feeding monsters. Faster than I thought possible, she raced into the fray, shooting them with it on full-power, extra crispy.

The rest of us were being jostled by the screaming and running crowd. I could hear sirens in the distance; someone had called the police.

Harry looked as though he had no idea what spell to use. "Killing curse?" he murmured under his breath. "No; illegal. Patronus?" I tuned him out, mostly because I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

"Kronos sent them for us," Annabeth muttered as she tried to keep from being dragged away by the sea of people. "We have to fight them."

She unsheathed a dagger as Percy uncapped his pen-sword. But, just as quickly, she turned to him.

"We can't use Celestial Bronze. They're not Greek monsters."

He looked at his weapon with discouragement. "Oh, right. That's just great." I didn't know what Celestial Bronze was, but I figured with a sinking heart that it meant his sword was useless.

Jacob, also fighting the tide, said, "Then what? We're kind of outnumbered. I can't control the Hollows, and if you haven't noticed, _they're closing in."_

I stared at the mess of Hollowgasts devouring people left and right. He was right; they were surrounding us and making their way closer.

I caught sight of Holly, shooting them over and over. She yelled angrily as her blasts hardly affected the Hollows, eventually using her mechanical wings to fall back to a safe height.

"That's right, little heroes. The Consortium has you. Give up the time machine, and you will have a swift, painless death."

I automatically looked for the source, but Kronos was nowhere to be found.

"You're the lord of time!" Percy shouted, struggling against the New Yorkers. "Can't you time travel by yourself?"

The voice didn't answer, and I realized with a jolt that he couldn't alter the past. Was that why he wanted it?

"Max!" Annabeth screamed, and I spun around in time to aim a roundhouse kick at one of the monsters. Unfortunately, it caught my foot with its tentacles, spinning me in the air and making me fall on my back.

It was horrifying up close. Absolutely terrifying. I would rather be facing Erasers or Flyboys or the apocalypse any day.

Just then, a bolt of light hit the Hollow, making it howl. It let go of me enough for me to get to my feet and take flight. I spread my wings, and I clumsily shot into the air by using the Hollow's flat head as a springboard.

I wasn't exactly worried about my wings being seen at the moment. The police had arrived, but the entire force had been eaten.

What a day.

From the air, I saw that my rescuer had been Holly, who was trying to shoot the Hollowgasts from above. She nodded at me.

Harry was making the most progress, using a variety of spells that made the Hollows explode or combust or just plain wither away and die. None of the others were so lucky.

Percy and Annabeth were locked in combat with two Hollows, Percy using his magic-water-powers to make sewers explode with waste water onto the Hollows. Nice.

Because of that, the street was rapidly flooding with brown water, but at that point I guess they didn't care. I did a quick account of the damage to my team.

Yes, they were officially my team now. At some point along this crazy adventure, I had realized that.

Annabeth. Percy. Harry. Holly. There was Jacob, fighting with what appeared to be a pair of garden rakes.

I paused, flapping my wings to stay aloft.

Where was Artemis?


	17. Cowboy Suchi: Haunted!

**I apologize in advance for Cowboy Suchi: Haunted.**

Artemis was, in fact, barely two streets away.

He had been with the others up until the Hollowgasts had begun their attack. Artemis was not very strong, and the rampaging crowd had carried him away before he could react.

He had fought, but his shouts had been swallowed up by the screams of the mob. He'd known even then that there was no possible way to get back to his group at the present time, though. Instead, he simply let the scrambled New Yorkers push him down the street until he was able to slip into an empty sushi restaurant.

The sign above the door read, COWBOY SUCHI: HAUNTED! Artemis stifled a groan.

A blonde woman in a kimono and cowboy hat came forward, eager to get her first paying customer of the month, albeit a very disheveled one. Unfortunately, it happened to be Artemis Fowl.

"How may I help you?" she asked in an obviously fake southern accent. "Come for some _Makizushi_? Or a ghost tour of a historic site, where horrible tragedies occurred over _twenty_ years ago?"

Artemis glanced with disgust at the plate in her hand, which was most definitely _not_ sushi. He could have said any number of things, but instead he responded, "You misspelled _sushi_ on the sign outside."

Her smile dimmed a few watts. "Would you care for a ghost tour?"

He took a deep breath. "I think not. May I use your back entrance?"

The woman positively wilted. Not a customer, then. Wordlessly, she pointed to the door in the back.

Artemis left the restaurant and exited into a back alley. The air was filled with the sound of sirens and screams. His friends had not defeated the Hollows yet.

Artemis assessed the situation. He had no idea where in New York he was or how far the crowds had dragged him, and he wasn't sure he could be any help in this sort of situation anyway.

On the other hand, the glimpses of the Hollowgasts he had gotten were not pretty ones, and they seemed just as terrifying as trolls. He couldn't leave Holly, Annabeth, Percy, Jacob, Harry, and Max. But that still left one question: where were they?

As he was debating which direction would bring him back to the heart of the battle, a sudden sound brought his attention to the far side of the alleyway. He caught sight of a shadow, noticeable in the fading light of day, slip into the shade of the alley wall. His heart plummeted.

 _Oh, no._

The teenage genius was smart enough to recognize the Hollowgast. Was it alone?

Assuming he survived, Holly was going to kill him.

 **Hermione**

Emma and Hermione emerged onto the street to find hundreds of people moving swiftly past, crowding onto the streets as if their lives depended on it. Which, Hermione realized with dejection, they probably did.

She instantly knew that there was no hope of fighting the tidal wave of people to find their friends. Their best bet was to find a side street that wasn't so crowded and make their way forward from there.

Suddenly, a person on the street screamed. The crowd parted, people renewing the effort to run, and Hermione saw what was happening; blood was everywhere.

"Dementors?" Emma whispered tensely as they shouldered through the mob.

Hermione shook her head, keeping her wand in front of her. Dementors, the soulless monsters that brought despair and misery in their wake, would have made themselves known with freezing temperatures and dark thoughts. This was not like that; whatever was attacking was completely undetectable.

 _"That's right, little heroes. The Consortium has you. Give up the time machine, and you will have a swift, painless death."_

Emma went rigid. Hermione hissed at her to keep moving, voice or not. Their enemies had found them, but they didn't have to go without a fight; that was certain.

"Do you know if it's Lord Voldemort, Kronos, or Opal Koboi?" Emma murmured in her ear.

"No," Hermione replied as more screams cut through the air. She felt a wave of despair settle over her; she would never get to see Harry or her boyfriend Ron Weasley ever again if they didn't make it out alive.

But no, she thought. They'd beaten worse than this before. Surely the others were fine.

As they crossed the street to an abandoned one, Emma suddenly grabbed her arm. Hermione halted, not lowering her wand. "What is it?"

"Hollowgast," Emma hissed. "That's what's attacking innocent people. Look."

She pointed down a side alley, lighting a flame with her fingertip to cast shadows in the dark. The shadow stood tall for a moment before slipping around the corner.

Emma clenched her jaw. "We should leave."

Hermione opened her mouth to agree, when she heard a shout down the very alley the Hollow had gone down.

The two girls locked eyes for a brief moment. _Not good._

"We're going after it," Hermione decided. Emma looked mutinous, but she followed with a flame in each hand.

They rushed down the alleyway, slowing around the corner. Hermione drew in a surprised breath – the Hollow was visible now, and it was _grotesque_.

"Do something!" Emma hissed. "It can smell you."

The Hollowgast had turned around, but Hermione closed her eyes against the image and cast the only spell she could think of that would work. Settling on a happy memory of her friends, she pointed her wand in front of her.

 _"Expecto Patronum!"_

Breathlessly, she opened her eyes to see a silver otter explode from her wand toward the Hollowgast. It was easy, in comparison to fighting Dementors, because this time there was no cold feeling of death and isolation.

The Hollowgast, although much stronger and fiercer than a Dementor, didn't stand a chance. The Patronus circled the monster, glowing with a bright light. The Hollow let out an unearthly screech as the Patronus leapt at it, and the Hollow turned and ran off, invisible once more.

Hermione couldn't see any blood, to her relief. She and Emma rushed forward to help the near-victim, when suddenly she realized that it wasn't a random New Yorker – it was _Artemis_.

Artemis was bruised from when the Hollowgast had slammed into him, and his hair was messier than either of them had ever seen it, but he stood up on his own. His blue eyes were surprisingly aware.

"Thank you," he managed, smoothing down his suit. Emma, in a rare moment of compassion, helped him forward although the Hollow hadn't seriously wounded him.

"We should… get back," he said, as though their being there was no surprise to him. "Neither of you know the way, I presume, so I believe we should head this way, which is where I came from."

Hermione considered him. He seemed more alarmed by his close encounter than he was letting on, but she figured he would be fine. And at the moment, she didn't think it was wise to ask why the others weren't with him. They would find out soon enough.

Artemis, on the other hand, had more important things to think about. As they walked out from the side street and rejoined the wailing chaos of the world beyond, he couldn't stop recalling the appearance of the invisible monster as it had attacked him. Trolls, he decided, weren't nearly as bad in comparison.

Then he remembered that Holly would be furious with him. Neither Hollowgasts nor trolls could compete with that.


	18. Hey, Voldy

I flew around for a while, trying to locate Artemis, before I spotted him nearly two blocks away, along with two other people. The street was deserted aside from the shadows of Hollowgasts, and from my altitude I could easily see the lone figures on the avenue. Artemis... and Hermione and Emma!

I circled above them before landing on the road, and wasted no time in asking Artemis, "Where were you?"

Artemis was incredibly disheveled, upon closer inspection. The weirdly formal suit that he always wore looked like it had been put through the shredder.

I was about to voice my surprise, but he met my gaze evenly. "I apologize; we came across some… _misfortune_. I will explain later."

I closed my mouth.

"Max?" Emma said. She looked very upset, maybe worried, and she had barely glanced at my widespread wings. "Where are the others? Is Jacob all right?"

Oh, great. From the expression on her face, I was reminded of Annabeth and Percy. Another love-struck couple.

Time to get the show on the road. "Yeah, they're fine. For now. Can we pick up the pace?"

Hermione glanced at Artemis. "I think so," she said, to which he nodded impatiently.

"Good. Meet you back there?" I asked, mostly because I was getting antsy. There were shadows from the invisible monsters everywhere, and some were inching closer to where we were huddled.

Hermione waved her wand, and a translucent layer of magic surrounded us, blocking the shadows. It didn't do anything for the Hollows' terrible stench, sadly, and they were still surrounding us.

"Well… Bye," I said with a forced jaunty wave, extending my wings and taking flight.

They didn't wave to me as I left. I didn't blame them.

We were going back to the heart of all this. Probably to die. I couldn't help them, and they couldn't help me.

As I flew over the city with a background track of police sirens in the distance, I returned to where we'd left off. There were more Hollows, and the others were still fighting for their lives.

In the middle of a flood.

I did a double take. The amount of sewer water that Percy had called up with his fancy-schmancy Poseidon powers had tripled since I'd left. They were now fighting in waist-deep water, and it seemed to be _working_.

I looked closer. Most of the Hollows were just shadowy indications, but the few that were still feeding on innocent New Yorkers were being quickly cut down by Holly with her Neutrino. The others…

In a flash, I understood that the flood hadn't just been a last-ditch attempt to stop the creatures. The swirling sewer water was everywhere, everywhere except where it couldn't go. The water created an outline around the Hollowgasts, making their forms perfectly clear to my Time Association buddies.

Harry could see them, so he could shoot weird curses and hexes at each one. I pulled back in the air just watching him. I decided I definitely would not want to be on a wizard's bad side.

Jacob, of course, could see the Hollows either way. I felt sorry for him; after glimpsing those horrible monsters, I couldn't imagine being forced to be able to see them whether I wanted to or not.

Annabeth was locked into combat with one of them. The brown water around them sloshed as she attacked, and when the Hollow must have managed to get in a hit, it rippled into visibility for a brief moment before fading once more.

I was tired just watching them. But I was likely the strongest fighter here, and I had to join the fight.

"FOR NARNIA!" I yelled, dive-bombing the ground where the water was mysteriously empty. I slammed into a surprised Hollow (at least I think it was surprised) and wasted no time it punching it in the face. It was strange; it looked as if I'd thrown a punch into thin air, but I felt the sickening crack of an inhuman skull all too well.

"This is weirder than Narnia," Percy said, appearing beside me. He was using the hilt of his sword to drive an invisible Hollowgast underwater, where it bubbled frantically for a few seconds before going quiet. "I don't remember any creepy octopus-mouthed shadow monsters in Narnia."

I thrust my elbow into the vacant space next to me, where a screech and a squelch told me I'd hit a target. "You never know."

Just then, I spotted movement from across the street. Artemis, Emma, and Hermione had arrived. And, judging by their expressions, they were horrified.

"You cannot win. Do not try to resist. _Give us the time travel device_."

By now, I'd recognized Kronos's voice. But until now I hadn't had an image to match it to.

He was tall. The splashing outlines of the Hollows stopped fighting. I used the opportunity to knock a few out.

His appearance was seemingly human, but there was no mistaking him for normal. Not when you got a load of his malicious, _golden_ eyes.

He was standing on a raised platform outside of a building and wearing an unsoiled black cloak. I squinted, wiping waste water from my eyes. There was a miniscule name tag stuck to his collar. It read, "Steve."

Percy, still beside me, whispered, "He's possessing someone."

Gee, really? This couldn't get any weirder.

There was someone next to Kronos. Someone whose appearance was much scarier than his movie counterpart.

"Relinquish the time turner."

His voice was cold and forceful. Not surround-sound-loud like Kronos's, but it carried across the area more than anything else. I felt my blood run cold.

"Voldy's here," Percy said, as if I hadn't figured it out.

Slowly and deliberately, Voldemort strode across the flood of sewer water. _Across_ it. He must have cast a spell, because he was walking on water.

"Surrender," he said. "Surrender and yield to me. Give us the time turner, or you will meet the same fate as _Opal Koboi_."

I heard Holly gasp from somewhere behind me. I didn't take my eyes from him, but I was trying to wrap my mind around his words. Opal Koboi… the homicidal pixie? That evil fairy, with the bleached-blonde hair, was _dead_?

"You killed Opal," Holly said in a horrified whisper. "Your own partner."

"Tactics," I heard Artemis say, although his voice was quieter than usual. "They all want to take over, and no one wants to share power. Eliminate the others, and you can be in control."

"SILENCE!" Kronos bellowed, still standing on the raised ledge. A few Hollows made rumbling noises.

"Give us the time turner!" Voldemort commanded again. His eyes flashed with madness that no sane human could achieve.

The Hollowgasts grumbled again. I knew there was a thin line stopping them from launching into battle with us once more.

I finally turned my head to look at the others. Holly was white-faced and gripping her Neutrino, Harry was staring at Voldemort with loathing, Hermione was clenching her fists, fire was burning down the whole length of Emma's arms, Percy and Annabeth were making sappy faces at each other, Jacob wasn't taking his eyes off the Hollowgasts, and Artemis –

"Pardon me," Artemis said from his place at the edge of the street, "but what is that sound?"

For a minute I didn't know what he was talking about. Then I heard the Hollows, still rumbling. Or, more correctly, the _ground_ rumbling.

Voldemort's eyes narrowed and I shrank back into the disgusting water, but at that moment, I heard Kronos roar, and with a ginormous _crack_ the road exploded under our feet.

 **So. Some poor NYC commuter named Steve is possessed, weirdo monsters are still being weird, and an apparent earthquake is happening? What on earth?**

 **Credit goes to Love for helping me with lots of this chapter. Oh, and we were going to have a character say in response to Voldemort's orders, "Excuse me for sounding cliche, but NEVER!" Imagine that, but British.**


	19. A Bit of Arty Drama

"It's an earthquake!" Emma cried, but at that moment I didn't particularly care what the terminology was. I was thrown to the ground as huge fissures opened up beneath us and chunks of asphalt began grinding across the street. I couldn't see them, but the Hollowgasts were making awful screeches (roars?) and shifting around; one brushed past me and I recoiled. They were the least of our worries, though – common sense told me that earthquakes in a place with tall buildings everywhere were bad news. I could see the towers above me shaking along with the earth.

Kronos bellowed as the platform below him split down the middle. Voldemort didn't spare him a glance.

But he noticed the _voice_ , as did we all.

 _YOU,_ she said. Somehow I knew it was feminine, even though the words weren't spoken aloud. _You dared disobey me?_

Oh, great. Another disembodied voice. That was, what? Three so far?

Voldemort hissed like a snake. "I take orders from no one," he sneered.

The ground gave another rumble. _You've taken orders from me since the moment you breathed your first breath of this life,_ she said. _I gave you rebirth, I gave you an army, and I gave you a chance for revenge. But when you go against my wishes, I have to act on my promises._

Voldemort's eyes flashed red. Ignoring the gaping cracks in the flooded street, he strode across the water to where the Titan stood and pointed his wand directly at Kronos's throat.

"As do I," he said softly.

It was a frozen moment. Kronos didn't look terribly worried, but his eyes narrowed and he glowered at his former partner.

 _Very well, then,_ the voice said.

Voldemort screamed, " _AVADA KEDAV –"_ just as the ground shook once more. A yawning crevice broke open below the water, creating a whirlpool that pulled at my soaking clothes. It stretched wider and wider, and I scrambled backward hurriedly. Voldy was not so lucky.

With a cry of rage, he shot lightning from his wand, but it was too late. The ground swallowed the world's greatest villain whole with barely more than a _creak_.

 _Worthless son, would you take care of the rest? I am rather tired._

Kronos nodded imperceptibly.

The voice then addressed the rest of us. _Children,_ she said, _you cannot hope to defeat me. Even if I am destroyed for a short time, I will always return. The Earth cannot be defeated. Remember that when you challenge Gaea._

The ground shuddered once more before going silent.

Earth? What did that mean? "Isn't Mother Earth supposed to be all happy and wonderful with, like, butterflies nesting in her hair?" I whispered to Percy. He didn't justify that with a response.

At that moment, a strange feeling swept over me, making me tingle. I rubbed my arms; the cold water was probably messing with me.

Kronos walked slowly closer to us. On his face was a small smile, as if he hadn't just seen his mom – Gaea, apparently – kicking wizard butt.

With one finger, the Titan pointed directly at me. "You have the time turner. Surrender it."

I closed my hand around the object in question. It sparked at my touch.

Percy was rigid beside me. I didn't turn to see the others, but I knew that they were afraid I would give up.

I clenched my fist and opened my mouth to respond.

"Max," Artemis broke in.

I whirled to face him. His usually impassive expression was gone, replaced with total bleakness and defeat.

"You have to give him the time turner," he said softly. "It is the only way we can possibly survive. We aren't going to win this battle."

" _What?_ " Holly shouted, but when she tried to move over to him, she bumped into a Hollow and was forced to retreat.

"They're going to kill us whether we give it to him or not," Jacob said harshly. "Why should we do it?"

"Because," Hermione broke in darkly from beside Artemis, "if we die holding it, Kronos will just take it from our dead bodies. This is the only way we'll have a chance."

"Yes," purred Kronos. He seemed to be enjoying our argument. "Now, let us move things along."

Everyone's voices suddenly stopped. I glanced around wildly. They had all frozen, as if…

Oh. "Time Lord. What a fitting name," I said to myself.

Kronos stood over me. I was sitting in waist-high water, which he was standing on. Maybe he'd inherited that power from Voldemort or something.

"It is your choice," he said. There was no word to describe his tone other than evil. "Live or die."

Well, I wanted to choose "live." But it was hard to do that when my knees were quaking harder than Gaea's earthquakes, even though Kronos's host body was named Steve.

I was pretty sure my thoughts weren't making much sense anymore.

I glanced at the frozen image of Artemis. _The only way._

"Fine," I spat. With a snap, I broke the time turner off its chain. I felt a strange sensation, like the time turner was taking away some sort of power from me.

Kronos smiled coolly as he took it from me. Suddenly, time unfroze, and everyone started talking again.

"We can't just do that!"

"Max isn't going to –"

I cleared my throat. Everyone stared at me, then at Kronos.

"Thank you for your time," Kronos said with a dark glimmer in his golden eyes. I had the feeling he'd purposely made a _time_ pun.

He strode across the water to the center of the street. "I would kill you all now," he said, "but I believe it would be more satisfying to destroy each and every one of you in a different place. A different place and _time_."

I tensed. _Nuts_.

Kronos spun the time turner once. Twice. Five times. I began to lose count.

"Demigods first," he whispered to Percy and Annabeth, right before he disappeared into a different time.

We were silent. I gripped my arms, wondering if we would all simply pop out of existence.

We waited some more.

Finally, Emma said with aggravation, "Well, if nothing's happening, what do we do?"

I faced the others. Emma, Harry, Holly, Jacob, Percy, and Annabeth looked worried and confused.

"We did it," Hermione said breathlessly. "It worked!"

"Huh?" was the collective response.

Artemis gave a patronizing smile. There was no hint of the defeated person from before. In fact, I was beginning to get suspicious.

We surrounded him and Hermione. "Do tell," I said with a generous dose of sarcasm.

Hermione glanced at each of us, frowning. "He asked me to use the charm _Tempusium Horia_ on the time turner," she said.

"What does that do?" I questioned.

Sounding a little defensive from all the interrogation, she said, "It sends the next user of the time turner an hour into the future, regardless of how many times it's turned. It's specifically _designed_ for time turners, actually."

There was a short pause as I considered that information. But I was still missing pieces. While I was distracted, Percy took up grilling Artemis.

"I don't get it."

Hermione backed out of the metaphorical spotlight, relieved, while Artemis said, "Well, of course _you_ wouldn't. But if we have now sent Kronos an hour into the future, where we know he will be, what can we do?"

In the hesitation that followed, I spoke up. "… Send people to get rid of him?"

He nodded approvingly. "Correct."

Holly was rubbing her forehead. Her Neutrino was hanging limply from one hand, and there was exasperation in her eyes.

"So you're saying we're in the clear?" she asked.

"Not yet." Artemis took out a waterlogged flip phone. Somehow, it still seemed to work, and he typed in a number. The phone rang for a few seconds before he said, "Hello? This is a contact of Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase. We would like to inform you that a dangerous Titan possessing a human will be appearing in one hour in the center of New York City. Thank you."

He hung up.

"Who was _that_?" I asked.

"Camp Half-Blood," Annabeth guessed, looking at Artemis for confirmation, who nodded.

I shook my head. Things were getting too complicated. "Okay. So now –"

"Guys?" Jacob piped up. "We have a problem."

I rotated slowly. Knowing what I'd find.

It turned out that I couldn't even spin all the way around. I bumped into a leathery, rot-smelling invisible wall.

"We're surrounded," Jacob sighed. I empathized with him; we were all past the point of fear.

"I guess Gaea's not too happy, huh?" I said, backing away from the first of many Hollowgasts.

 **So. I'm hoping you got all that. And I'm hoping I don't have to revamp this entire chapter if it's too confuzzling. That said, the spell was a combination of Google Translate and** ** _Wingardium Leviosa_** **. Thank you, and happy Easter.**


	20. Return of the Party Ponies

**Sorry I took so long. It was hard to write this chapter, with all the action. Plus, I needed Love's help in this chapter. Her words.**

 **We worked hard on this one. A lot of research (*cough* PJO *cough*) and forward-thinking went into this. An everyday conversation between us about the story went something like this:**

 **Courage: I accidentally put Max in a coma!**

 **Love: WHY'D YOU PUT HER IN A COMA?**

 **Courage: WAHHH!**

 **Love: Take her out of the coma!**

 **Courage: I'm trying!**

 **Love: THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!**

 **Anyway, here you go.**

"We really can't catch a break, can we?" Annabeth asked sardonically, unsheathing her dagger. She moved slowly, obviously knowing that we wouldn't be able to fight our way out of this situation.

I watched as Percy, Hermione, and Harry followed suit, drawing out their respective weapons. Fire engulfed Emma's arms for about the fourth time today, and I could see it was taking its toll on her.

Jacob looked like he wanted to steady her, but the flames made it impossible to get within two feet of her.

Holly held up her Neutrino. Artemis stood next to her without a weapon, looking like he was weighing our options.

I wasn't feeling optimistic. It was nine against two hundred, tops.

The Hollowgasts were breathing heavily around us. I felt them, standing inches from us, but they held their attack. Gaea was in charge, and she was drawing this out.

With a whoosh, I shot my wings out, nearly hitting Jacob in the face. I shuddered as my wings shoved aside Hollows, feeling their invisible claws and tongues slip past my feathers. They were too close, closing in too fast.

The ground rumbled, and I almost lost my footing.

 _Your fates have already been decided. Making trouble for my son will not change anything,_ Gaea said _. I will rise again, and when I wake, you will already be dead._

I frowned. "What, you're sleeping?" I asked, facing the Hollowgast army. Where do you even direct a question when you're speaking to the Earth itself?

"No, we kind of destroyed her human form last time," Percy whispered to me. "Well, our friend Leo did…" He trailed off. His brow furrowed. "Hey, Gaea, why aren't you trying to kill _Leo_?"

Gaea growled, or maybe she was just shaking the ground again. _He is not in my realm. He has not set foot on land._

"Huh," said Jacob, who looked thoroughly confused. "So is this Leo person a pirate, or has he been flying this whole time?"

"Not sure," Annabeth said. "He contacted us once, when we thought he was dead, but –"

A wave of pain suddenly seared through my left wing. I leaped into the air with a yell, to find that blood was spreading across my wing. I wrenched it away from the invisible creature that had clearly tried to take a bite out of me.

 _Silence,_ Gaea said. I tucked my wing in tight, vowing to never celebrate Earth Day ever again. _Enough of this banter._

 _The Underworld will welcome you._

"Run!" Annabeth shouted, grabbing Percy's hand and sloshing through the flood of sewer water toward the closest building, just as the Hollowgasts surged forward, creating huge ripples in their wake. I tucked in my other wing, curled my hands into fists, and prepared to take down at least a dozen of invisible opponents.

Holly activated her robotic wings and hauled Artemis after her, following the demigods, but the onslaught was upon us. Emma shot balls of white-hot fire, catching a few Hollows, Holly attempted to shoot some while falling back into the building, and Harry almost hit me with the Killing Curse.

"Sorry," he said, but I was too busy punching a monster in the face to care, all the while thinking that I really didn't want to go through this battle _again_.

The Hollows pushed us back, so that we were all nearly inside the building behind us. I could imagine Gaea's game plan – trap us in a building, corner us, and then maybe make us all fall to our deaths with a well-timed earthquake. Nice.

A Hollow nearly sliced my arm off with a razor-sharp, clawed hand, managing to draw blood. I punched it in the general direction of its head, and with a sickening crack, I knew I'd hit my mark.

I drew back, attempting to send a roundhouse kick at it while moving on to the next monster, but it caught my foot with an invisible tongue, flipping me through the air. I landed on my back with a splash in the water and sank under the surface.

The Hollow was on top of me. I could feel it, deciding whether to drown me or just dine on bird-kid, extra marinated.

I couldn't breathe. Not because my gills weren't working, but because there was so much _dirt_ in the water. I didn't even want to think about what else there was, aside from dirt.

I struggled. It didn't help.

Then, suddenly, the Hollow was off me. I surged to my feet, gasping for breath. Possibly the only thing worse than drowning was to have been submerged in _New York City sewer water_ , but I could worry about health repercussions later.

I glanced around. The Hollow was off me… why?

Suddenly, a loud, clear honk filled the air. The sound doubled and tripled until it was a chorus of notes. It sounded like the trumpet of horns.

"What –" I started, but at that moment, a voice bellowed, "ROOT BEER PARTY!" and all hell broke loose.

Huge, quadruped creatures stormed the street, coming from nowhere. They had wild manes, colorful t-shirts, and… and they were centaurs.

There was no other way to put it. Half human, half horse.

I stood there, dumbstruck, as dozens of these centaurs barreled into the invisible brigade, waving what seemed to be Nerf guns. Cupcakes. Toilet plungers. Bows and arrows with _boxing gloves_ attached. Paintball guns. Fake lightsabers.

And each of them had a bottle of root beer in one hand.

"Woo! Attack, DUDES!" one shouted, slashing a green plastic lightsaber in front of him. The air seemed to split open as a Hollowgast screeched in pain.

More and more horse-men crowded the street, swinging and throwing their unusual weapons at the Hollows. The monsters fought back, occasionally rippling into sight when they managed to get in attacks.

I stood there, watching. My jaw was hanging open, and I couldn't process what was happening.

This was utter chaos!

One centaur with an afro wig hollered, "Wahoo! C'mon, BABY! The Party Ponies are in the HOUSE!" and hurled a pink-frosted cupcake, hitting me in the side of my head.

That threw me out of my stupor. Stars exploded in front of my vision, and I almost fell over. Rock hard cupcakes, huh?

I picked up the baked good, which had fallen underwater. I chucked it back into the melee.

"Max!" a voice called.

I spotted a flash of blonde hair, and suddenly Annabeth was in front of me.

"Come on!" she shouted, grabbing my arm.

We ducked and weaved through battling Hollows and centaur-people, until we reached the side of the road. She pulled me through a doorway into a vacated shop, where all the sounds were more muffled.

I wobbled on my feet, sitting down on the shag carpet. We were in a trinket shop, filled to the brim with wind chimes and dreamcatchers.

"DIE, EVIL MONSTERS!" a centaur screamed from outside.

Annabeth sat down next to me. "It's okay, Max," she said. "We know what's going on."

I looked past her, noticing that the others were filing into the building behind us. Holly and Artemis were in the lead.

All of them looked weary and almost as confused as I was.

"Why… why are there freaking _centaurs_ out there?" I asked, trying to focus.

"They're called the Party Ponies. New York chapter, I believe. Love hanging loose, and above all else, root beer," a new voice said.

A figure stepped from the doorway behind Jacob and Emma. It was shorter than them. A lot shorter.

At first glance it looked like a baby rhinoceros. At second glance, more like a gargoyle.

Either way, I knew it wasn't human.

The creature stood over me. Sitting down I was about the same height as it.

It held out a stubby gray hand. "Pleased to meet you. You're Max Ride, right?"

I nodded, all the while unable to believe my eyes. "And you're what?"

His smile – because I think it was a _he_ – dimmed a few watts. "Well, I guess they didn't have time to tell you everything," he sighed.

I glanced at the others. Harry, Hermione, Jacob, and Emma were in conversation.

Artemis came over and put his hand on the creature's shoulder. "No. 1, friend, I believe Max is a bit confused, as are we all. Why did you come?"

The gargoyle-person frowned. "Well, when I heard that my closest friends were in trouble and were about to be killed for the second time, I decided to come help."

Holly shimmered into visibility by his shoulder, unshielding. "Wait," she said, "did _you_ bring the Party Ponies here?"

He shrugged in what I could only assume was a modest gesture. "They weren't too hard to find. I just cast a magical aura pulse and told them where to go."

" _Can somebody explain what the heck is going on?_ " I cut in.

The gray creature blinked and smiled at me. "I'm sorry. My name is No. 1, and I am a demon warlock. If you don't know what that is, don't bother asking, because we don't have time."

"No. 1?" I repeated. Was that his name?

"No. 1," Holly confirmed. "Don't ask."

"Don't ask what?" the demon – No. 1 – said.

"Nothing," Holly and Artemis groaned at the same time.

I turned back to the demon warlock (whatever that was). "So, you brought a bunch of drunk centaurs to fight the Hollowgasts," I said, still not sure how or why. "They're out there fighting with _Nerf guns_. What do we do now?"

"Oh, this is the easy part." No. 1 laughed. "All we have to do is form a magic circle to trap your enemy, Gaea, in a vessel apart from her own body. Easy as pie!"

He frowned. "Although I'm never sure why people use that expression. I tried to make a cherry pie once, and Qwan banned me from the kitchen for a week."

I didn't know who Qwan was, and I was pretty sure I didn't want to know. Standing up, I squeezed water from my windbreaker and shook out my wings. The left one was still painful, but I would deal with that later.

Invisible monsters.

Psycho centaurs.

Demon warlocks too cheerful for their own good.

Why was my life so nuts?

"All right," I called, rounding up the others, who were on the other side of the room but still listening to our conversation. "So… that means the Party Ponies, or whatever they're called, are our distractions. We need to get to safer ground."

I faced No. 1, Artemis, and Holly. To the demon, I said, "Magic circle, huh? As long as it's easy as pie."


	21. Another Filler Chapter

**So, like the title, this is a filler chapter - except it isn't really, because it's important to the plot. Sorry it's so short. Anyway, we posted a new poll on our account, asking completely logical questions about what you think will happen next in the story. Vote now, before the next chapter!**

It wasn't really as easy as pie.

Or a piece of cake.

Or any other dessert-related easiness analogies you can think of.

First of all, No. 1 led us away from the building, and therefore away from safety. The Party Ponies were up to their manes in fighting, and it was impossible to avoid all of the Hollowgasts.

One, completely visible and munching on the detached leg of a centaur (I wouldn't get that image out my head for months), tried to attack us as we crossed the sidewalk.

With a flick of his stubby hand, No. 1 made the Hollow spontaneously combust in a flash of red sparks.

"I feel bad about it," he admitted, "but they aren't living things, really."

"They're not," Holly agreed, trying to reassure him.

We crossed the street and ducked down a back alley (why do we always end up in alleys?) without Gaea making a stink. I took a moment to wonder why she wasn't trying to stop us. Was there a limit to her power?

"Hey," said Percy after a moment's traveling. "Where exactly are we going? Can't we just do the magic circle wherever we are?"

No. 1 smiled. It was a strange expression to see on such an inhuman face.

"No," he replied. "We have to at least be able to see the target of the spell before we create it."

" _What?_ " Emma shouted, flames dancing on the tips of her fingers. "We're on top of her! Doesn't that count?"

No. 1 wagged a finger. "No, we have to see the center of her essence. Meaning, her physical representation has to be in our sightline."

"Can't you create the spell on your own?" Holly asked, eyes narrowed. "You're the most powerful warlock in millennia. Aren't your powers nearly limitless?"

"Sure," No. 1 said easily, "if you're okay with ripping apart the fabric of space and time." He gave a little eye roll. "This is easier, plus nobody dies."

" _Honestly_ , Holly," Artemis said, earning a smack on the shoulder.

"All right," I said to take charge. "We're not getting anywhere. If we have to go to Gaea, where is she?"

There was a pause. Annabeth and Percy exchanged glances.

"Um," Percy said.

"Her… essence… was scattered across the world," Annabeth elaborated, twisting her dagger in its sheath. "That was supposed to keep her from reforming. We don't know how she recovered her consciousness."

"Oh, that makes more sense," said No. 1 brightly. "She probably reassembled easily, then. We should have no problem locating her."

The demigods looked flabbergasted. I was feeling the same way.

"Then how?" I asked, fed up with talking in circles.

The demon warlock turned to Hermione. "A simple locator spell," he said, patting her arm.

Hermione nodded, took a breath, and whispered something into her outstretched wand. Instantly, a bright white flash illuminated the wand for a moment, fading to the wand's tip.

"Strong magic," Holly noted.

"Er, what's that do, Hermione?" Harry asked sheepishly. I figured it was a spell he was supposed to know.

"Weren't you listening just now? It's a locator spell." Hermione tilted her head at No. 1. "Should I use it to locate Gaea's essence?" she asked him.

No. 1 nodded. "Locate away!"

"Wait," Holly said suddenly. She dashed out of the alley, closer to the fray.

"Where are you going?" the demon warlock asked, but she stood at the end of the fighting where it was too loud to hear him. Quickly, she held up a small handheld computer, pointing it at the fighting, and it emitted a small burst of light. In seconds she was back with us, tucking the piece of technology away.

"What was that?" I asked.

"A camera," Artemis said curiously, tilting his head at her.

"I took a picture of the Party Ponies to give to Foaly," she said, grinning. "You can never have enough blackmail."


	22. That Good Old Magic Circle

We walked for a while, leaving the fighting behind. No. 1 was once again in the lead, this time accompanied by Hermione, who was preforming the locator spell.

Apparently, the essence of Gaea, or whatever it was, was close by. But not _too_ close by, whatever that meant.

"She should be just on the next street over," No. 1 said cheerfully, glancing at the wand in Hermione's hand. I didn't want to ask how he could tell. It would probably result in a long-winded explanation that I wouldn't understand anyway.

"Could you explain what we're doing again?" Jacob asked, shoving his hands in his pockets and scowling.

The demon warlock missed the animosity. "We're forming a magical circle to trap Gaea's soul in a vessel. That way, she will be permanently separated from her godly self."

"Obviously," Percy added.

Jacob shrugged and opened his mouth as though he were about to say something else, but he immediately stopped in his tracks. "Uh… do you see that?"

I, along with the others, swung my head around to look at the street in front of us. Adrenaline was already surging through my veins.

But nothing was there, apart from abandoned cars and tipped trash cans.

"No," I said. "Um, what are we supposed to be looking at?"

"I see a street, if that's what you're asking," Percy provided.

Jacob shook his head, not taking his eyes away from the street. "No, seriously," he said. "Look."

I looked. Didn't see anything.

"Is it a Hollow?" I asked. He'd mentioned that he was able to see them when they were invisible, which after today was an ability I didn't envy.

"No," he said, sounding annoyed. "You really can't see it?"

"We really can't," Artemis said patiently, "so if you could explain what we _should_ be seeing…"

"I can see it too," No. 1 said, sounding thrilled. "And, if Hermione's spell is right, which it is, then this is the manifestation of Gaea's power!"

" _What_ is?" I snapped, still not seeing whatever we were supposed to be seeing.

Jacob swore. "It looks like a giant, swirling, magic-looking blob of energy," he said.

"A cocoon of light," No. 1 interjected.

Well, that was just great. So we'd found Gaea's spirit, right? I fervently hoped that the hard part was over now.

No such luck.

"Should we do the magic circle, then?" Hermione asked, voice lowered.

"Yes," No. 1 responded slowly, "although it will be a bit harder now that she knows we're here."

It took me a second to process what he'd just said.

" _What?_ "

 _Oh, yes, little heroes,_ Gaea's voice said in our minds. So, she was awake again. _You cannot win against me. Your pitiful magic circle will not defeat me, for I am of unimaginable power._

Suddenly, No. 1 doubled over, gasping in pain.

 _Do not hope for victory._

Holly rushed to No. 1's side, helping him up. His eyes were glowing with magic, and he looked troubled.

"We should probably start the magic circle now," he squeaked.

"Gaea's strong," Annabeth cautioned. "No. 1, are you sure you'll be able to resist her?"

He convulsed again as Gaea's magic swept over him, but he stayed standing. Red sparks flew from his clawed fingertips, burning the air around him.

"I'm pretty sure. I think," he said, and let out a jet of magic to combat Gaea's powers.

 _My magic is stronger than yours, demon._

We ignored her.

"All right, everyone, make a circle," No. 1 said. He didn't sound particularly powerful, but the crimson magic surrounding him was formidable enough.

"No. 1," Artemis said curiously, "won't we all need magic for this spell to succeed?"

"Not this time, Arty," the demon warlock said with a wink. "I've been practicing, and anyway, a fairy, two wizards, a couple of demigods, and some peculiar kids should have enough magic in total for the spell."

Not including me, of course. But I guessed that hardly mattered.

"Let's get started, then," Emma said, folding her arms.

No. 1 took her hand in his own. She then took Jacob's hand, who took Hermione's, who took Harry's. He in turn took Annabeth's hand, who obviously took Percy's hand, who took Holly's, who took Artemis's. Artemis reached out for my hand.

"I don't even have magic," I objected.

"Trust me," Artemis said, lacking his customary unfriendliness. "You will want to be a part of this."

I shrugged, taking his hand.

No. 1 backed out of the circle, letting Emma's hand go. She and I clasped hands in his absence, and the only thing I could think was that I hoped she wouldn't set me on fire by accident. Or on purpose.

"Okay," No. 1 said, standing in the center of the circle. "If you have it, channel your magic. The rest of you, stay calm and I'll do the rest."

"Calm," I said. "Right."

I'll be honest, I didn't really expect much. Maybe magic glowing eyes and some floating powers, but mostly just normal lunacy.

Well, that's not what happened.

As soon as No. 1 started the incantation, I felt magic rush up my arms and spread like a shockwave throughout my body. My eyes were wide beyond belief, and I glanced at the others, seeing the world with magic for the first time.

And I could also now see the glowing mass of energy in the street in front of us. Gaea's essence.

"Focus, Max," Holly said from beside Artemis. Her eyes were closed, and upon further inspection, so were everyone else's.

I shut my eyes and was lifted up into a sort of mind-world.

Have you ever listened to a boring lecture on the dreamscape, the place where your brain goes when you're sleeping? This was sort of like the idea of that dreamscape, except it was practically empty.

Except for the other people.

I could sense the others next to me. We were connected, if that makes sense (which it doesn't).

This was insane. I wasn't sure if that was in a good or a bad way.

 _Definitely in a good way_ , Percy said, only he hadn't said it.

I instinctively shoved back. _Don't invade my thoughts!_

 _Stop struggling_ , Artemis said. _Channel the magic and don't resist_.

It was hardest for me, I guess. I'd never been a trusting person, and these latest events hadn't helped that.

 _Everyone ready?_ No. 1 asked from the center of the magic.

 _Not really_ , Harry admitted. Through his thoughts and feelings, I could tell he didn't mean it, though.

 _Okay_. No. 1 began the spell.

I could feel the magic being siphoned off to cage Gaea's essence. It wrapped around her, forming glowing bars, trapping her in place. Her rage was overwhelming, sending splinters through our shared consciousness, but No. 1 held on.

The magic tied her onto a sort of leash. I could feel No. 1 leading the magic toward our circle.

In real life – outside the circle – he took a small box from the ground. It was a sort of container.

I could see his thoughts. We were going to trap Gaea in a harmless form, a small centipede, in the container.

I felt sorry for the centipede.

We brought the mass of energy closer. Gaea was thrashing and writhing, trying to break free. No. 1 held on, dragging her toward the container. At first, it seemed it was working – she came slowly closer, straining all the while.

But then –

The magical leash snapped.

Our thoughts were completely in unison.

 _No – oh, no._

No. 1's sudden emotions were a metaphorical wall slamming into us.

 _This is not good,_ he said. Understatement of the year.

Gaea's essence expanded, filling our magical vision.

 _You all will perish,_ she resounded.

She could not be contained inside a simple centipede.

Definitely not good.

 **Welcome to the Author's Note! Tsk, tsk, No. 1 should've known that the mighty Gaea can't be trapped in a lowly centipede. I'm sorry if I didn't do the magic-mind-sharing thing justice. See you next chapter!**


	23. Angel from the Past

**60 Seconds Earlier**

Angel was reluctantly following Max down the street when she heard the voice.

They had just eaten dinner at a Burger King. The flock hadn't left Manhattan right away despite Max's protests, because Nudge and Gazzy had insisted on a meal and rest beforehand. Max had reluctantly agreed to book a hotel room and stay the night.

Angel was still deep in thought about the newly-discovered magic of the world. All that power, as Opal Koboi had told her, waiting to be used. And Opal's plans were quite ingenious.

But Angel held back. She didn't want to do anything she'd regret. If she wanted to change loyalties, she would have to make sure there were no loose ends.

Plus, magic was powerful and deadly. Angel had seen that firsthand when the Dementor had attacked them. Its thoughts were awful, worse even than the horrible sense of hopelessness the Dementor brought with it. If Angel had access to the mind-wiping technology the fairies could use, she would have wiped her mind of all of it.

Max and the others were deep in conversation about pizza and chocolate-chip cookies. They wouldn't notice if she slipped away.

Angel was about to make a break for it, but then something spoke to her through the shadows. It took her a moment to realize it was only thoughts.

Strange. The streets were oddly deserted at the moment, probably because of the alarm that had sounded earlier (Max said it was probably a car crash or something), so no one was nearby.

 _No, no, they cannot destroy me; I will finish these mortals off! Nothing can contain me, for I am Gaea, the creator of all life! I am the very ground they step upon! I will crush them and scatter_ their _essences across the Earth!_

Angel found this thought very intriguing. It was definitely magical, but in a more immeasurable way than Opal's.

There were more minds there, but they were so jumbled up it seemed as if they were one single being.

 _Oh, my – Not good – I should have thought of – What spell? – Frond, we can't stop it!_

Angel was even more interested in this mind, or minds. Before the flock could notice, she ducked into a back alley and traced the thoughts to where they originated.

Only a street away.

Angel unfolded her pure white wings and carefully set off in that direction.

 **Max**

The essence of Gaea was not a pretty sight.

With our shared mind, we were all graced with the beauty of seeing her glowing form twist and turn, growing larger and larger, having escaped our mental confines. She was free, and she was not happy.

 _I shall curse you all,_ she said _, especially the imp. Turning you into a tree would be too kind. Perhaps a garbage can?_

"Living out life as a garbage can," Percy muttered. "What a way to go."

"Spend eternity getting filled with free food? Fine by me," I volleyed, but in truth it was just an automatic response.

 _Sorry, but she's going to turn us all into dumpsters if we don't put her in a vessel,_ No. 1 interjected via our shared mind. Still wasn't used to that.

 _Uh-oh_ , thought Holly, and I saw what she had noticed through her mind. At first I didn't know what we were seeing. Then my heart plummeted.

 _Found a vessel,_ Jacob said, and I sent a sharp wave of anger at him. _Sorry!_

Peeking around the corner of the alleyway was a small, blonde head. There was no mistaking Angel, even after all these months.

"Leave!" I shouted, but over the swirling vortex of Gaea's essence, it didn't carry.

Mother Nature herself thought I was talking to her, and said to us, _You won't get rid of me. I will deliver you a slow, painful death._

On another day, I would have said something about her long-winded speeches already doing that to me, but now wasn't the time. Angel was creeping out from behind the corner, watching with wide eyes.

What was she doing? Hadn't we, the flock, left New York as soon as we'd left the Association's building the year before? No, the specifics were hazy. All I knew was that it would be seriously confusing if I met myself from the past.

But Past Angel shouldn't be here. Gaea was frothing and churning, and I had no idea if Angel could even see her without magic.

 _You will die, demigods and company,_ said Gaea.

Part of her glowing essence formed and solidified into a human hand. She held it in front of her, and a tremendous earthquake wracked the ground.

 _An example of my power_ , she said.

A ball of fire the size of an armchair ignited around her human hand. Ten times bigger than Emma's.

 _Another_ , she said.

"Holy Hera," said Percy, as serious as I'd ever heard him. "We're toast."

"Max?" No. 1 said timidly, both inside and outside our heads. "We need a vessel…"

"No," I said, because I could see his mind, and what he was going to say.

"It would only be temporary. We could hold her until a Retrieval team comes in, bring her back to HQ, get a new vessel, and do a mind wipe."

" _No_ ," I said again, more forcefully.

"There is no other option," Artemis cut in. "We will all die otherwise."

"No!"

"Life or death, Max."

I ground my teeth. "N. O."

Percy stepped in. "Guys, we can read her mind. There's no way in Hades that she'll say yes."

"There's no other choice!" Annabeth snapped.

"No," I said. "Use me instead. I'm not letting that _thing_ inside Angel!"

"We can't," Artemis said shortly. "You are far more dangerous if Gaea's essence were to inhabit you. I understand this is a terrible decision, but there is no other way."

"Plus," added No. 1, "we can't put her into a vessel that's already in the circle. Sorry."

The spirit of Gaea was breaking up the ground underneath us. It would all be over unless –

"FINE!" I said, and just as Gaea was about to incinerate us all, I let the magic flow through our circle, binding her once again.

She pulled and strained and roared, but we shoved her. I couldn't stop the tears from flowing down my face, but we were doing it. We wouldn't be able to hold her for long, but it was enough to thrust her into the unsuspecting seven-year-old.

Down Angel went, crumpling at her place at the corner of the alley. She screamed, and my heart wrenched, but we filled her with the essence of Gaea, and the earthquake shuddered to a halt.

All was silent. Angel writhed on the ground, her small white wings convulsing, spreading out and folding back in, over and over again.

I let go of Artemis's and Emma's hands, releasing the magic of the circle. At once, the world returned to 3-D, dull and empty of magic. I felt suddenly alone without the other voices in my head. Apparently two was no longer enough.

"Is she safe?" I asked sharply but quietly.

"Gaea should be just waking up in her new form," No. 1 said. "She won't have any power, but –"

"That's not what I asked. Is she safe?"

He coughed. "For now, probably."

I went to her. Her pulse was still beating, but she was shuddering and shaking hard.

I hadn't seen Angel this young in what felt like forever. This was her before the plotting, before she was really a handful. This was her somewhere in between the Angel that I loved and the Angel that I knew.

"We're going to save her," I said forcefully. The others were standing silently around me. Emma had lit a small flame to see since the sun was low in the sky.

Where were we going, Holly's home? Haven, was it called? I didn't care what it was.

I gathered her in my arms, even though there was a chance she could turn all demon-Gaea at any moment.

"Let's hurry."


	24. Here Comes Trouble

**I felt that we needed a break from the angst for a chapter, so this chapter happened. I apologize.**

We reached Haven in less than half an hour, but it was enough time for Gaea/Angel to wake up and start screaming. We'd gotten a shuttle, courtesy of some random fairies who were friends with Holly, and we were ready when Gaea returned to consciousness.

"Maximum Ride!" she shouted with all the hatred of Gaea, but still with Angel's young voice. "I see your life now! This child has heard your darkest thoughts, deepest desires! You can halfff –"

Harry stuffed a bagel into her mouth.

"It's all we could find," he told me apologetically.

I breathed a sigh of relief, but I knew it wasn't over. I should have realized that Gaea-as-Angel would be able to see all of Angel's memories. She knew all of my weaknesses… and I wasn't comfortable with a murderous, psychopathic, omnipotent deity knowing all about my feelings for Fang.

I met her gaze evenly, although I was suddenly quaking in my boots. Could Gaea use Angel's powers? I assumed so, but she wasn't ranting inside my head, so I hoped she hadn't figured out how yet.

"We're almost there," Holly said tensely from the cockpit. Since we'd tied Gaea/Angel up, she hadn't looked me in the eyes. Neither had Harry, Hermione, or No. 1.

Yes, No. 1 was still with us. I wasn't sure why he was still hanging around, but he insisted he wanted to help, so he was riding with us on the shuttle.

Gaea glared at me with Angel's eyes. I yearned to comfort the real Angel, but I knew it probably would have no effect.

We'd tied her up with steel cables that Holly had found in the shuttle. When Holly's piloting made the shuttle tilt in the chute, she tried to use the momentum to break free, but we held on to her.

I couldn't sit there looking at her, so I turned away for the remainder of the ride.

When we reached the underground city and disembarked, Holly stood, hesitant, at the hatch of the shuttle.

"We'll need to hide you," she said to us, with the exception of Artemis and No. 1. "The People won't just ignore seven Mud Men walking down the street. Eight, including her."

We looked at Gaea-as-Angel. Hermione had used some sort of floating spell to carry her through the air, still bound, but even now she was still struggling.

Quickly, Hermione changed the subject. "We'll need some sort of invisibility, is that right?"

Holly nodded. "We have cam foil, but that's not completely invisible. Plus, you'd have to be very careful not to be seen with that."

"What's cam foil?" I asked dully, sick of having to ask about every single thing.

"Technology created by Foaly," Artemis said. "It's not his greatest invention, certainly, but seeing as most fairy races can shield, he had little reason to invent it at all, yet he did. In that way, we are lucky."

I still had no idea what cam foil was, but I didn't bother to ask again. It was better to just go along for now, rather than try to decipher everything.

Holly dug around in the shuttle before emerging with what looked like an electrical sheet of tinfoil. Or aluminum. Like I know the difference.

Anyway, it didn't look like it could keep us hidden from magical fairies.

"It works," No. 1 said in response to the looks we were giving them. "I used it to escape a blonde French girl's chateau once."

Again, I didn't bother to ask.

Holly pressed some sort of button on the sheet, and instantly it disappeared, leaving only a slight shimmer in the air.

"Interesting," Percy mused.

Long story short, we used the cam foil. There was just enough to put in front of Angel, Harry, Percy, Annabeth, Hermione, Emma, Jacob, and me, but there was not nearly enough to cover our backs.

Gaea/Angel was struggling, which made it all the harder.

" _Petrificus Totalus_ ," Hermione whispered, and Angel went rigid.

I gave Hermione a look that said, "She better be okay. Or else."

Holly, No. 1, and Artemis were outside the cam foil, because apparently other fairies knew them already. Holly warned us to stick to the curbs of streets and to keep our all too visible backs facing away from pedestrians.

Haven City was incredible. I hadn't seen it up close when we'd visited earlier, but it was unbelievable. A whole city, somewhat cleaner yet darker than New York, all underground. Annabeth must have been in heaven.

"Keep moving," Holly grumbled. "We need to get through Police Plaza."

We walked. I thought we'd make it, until someone stepped in front of us.

"Captain Short!" he said. We froze behind our cam foil and looked to Holly.

"Hello, Trouble," Holly said. What did that mean? Were we in trouble? "Nice to see you outside the LEP."

" _Commander Trouble Kelp_ ," Artemis whispered for our benefit.

What kind of name was Trouble? I looked to Emma, who was next to me in the cam foil, but she shrugged.

"Where have you been for the past month?" Trouble boomed. He had the voice of a leader; that was for sure. "Foaly says something about an aboveground mission and clams up about the details. Care to shed some light?"

"No. 1 and I were just visiting for a while," Holly replied easily. "You know how the Mud Men are."

I heard a thump, but didn't risk peeking around the cam foil to see what was going on.

"Yes, I was just going to ask," said Trouble. "Why is your Mud Man here? Haven is in a difficult place right now, and we don't need any more problems."

"He's not _my_ Mud Man," she retorted, "and Foaly just wants to see him. They have this big ego contest going on to see who can win a chess match."

"Ah," said Trouble. "I see." He didn't walk away.

"Well, goodbye, sir," Holly prompted.

"…What is that?"

I stiffened, catching the gazes of the others behind the cam foil. Was he seeing us?

Holly tried to sound offhand. "Probably just some heat waves."

There was a pause. "There is the possibility that someone is spying. After this last decade…"

"I assure you, it is nothing," Artemis broke in. "Now we really must go. Goodbye, Commander."

"Bye!" No. 1 said cheerfully, and we hurried down the street.

I glanced at Angel, still restrained. Her eyes were furious.

We needed to hurry.


	25. Gaea the Amazing Hamster

**So sorry that my schedule for updating had been off. My computer is sort of broken, and we just had some centipedes in the house, but that's over now, I think. Anyway, I think this chapter's pretty good. Review!**

Long story short, we made it to Police Plaza, the center of Haven, and then to the Operations Room. On the way, we passed hundreds of short fairy people, some with wings and green skin. I wasn't even weirded out.

There was a camera outside the Operations Room. We threw down the cam foil, and Holly screamed at the camera until Foaly let us in.

"'Party Ponies'? You sent me those pictures," he accused her as soon as the door slid open.

I couldn't help but stare. The other centaurs in battle were one thing, but up close, I wondered if I was dreaming.

"That's right, Foaly, but we're in trouble." Holly briefly explained about Gaea.

The color drained out of his face. "Come inside."

It was a small room, cluttered with technology, but Foaly cleared away a spot on the desk for Angel. We placed her carefully on her back; she was awake, but she was still under the spell Hermione had cast.

Foaly placed a quick call, telling us he was getting Qwan over here. I'd heard that name from No. 1, but I still didn't know who he was.

"Can you reverse the spell on her for a second?" Foaly asked Harry and Hermione. "I'd like to know what she's thinking right now."

"You can just ask her," said Percy. "Apparently she's some sort of mind –"

"No, she's not," I snapped, worried. If she knew she could use Angel's powers, would she?

Percy looked confused, but he looked at Angel and then at me, and I could see he'd figured it out.

"Of course," Hermione said to answer Foaly's question. With a wave of her wand, Angel/Gaea was freed from the spell, although she was still bound.

Right away, Gaea began screeching at us.

"You've trapped me in this weak form, but I am still strong! This mortal's powers are numerous! I will use them all to send you to Hades, and then I will find your souls and destroy you there!" et cetera, et cetera.

"No. 1," said Artemis over the racket, "could you please force her to listen?"

No. 1 smiled and his eyes glowed red. Suddenly Gaea's mouth slammed shut.

"She can only talk when she's answering something we ask her," he provided. Then he tilted his head. "I think. Sometimes I get my enchantments mixed up."

Foaly bent over her. "Eh, what powers does Angel have?" In response to our looks, he said, "What? It's a starting question. If you Mud People have something to ask her, go ahead."

Gaea wrenched Angel's jaws apart and snapped, "I refuse to answer."

"I forgot a truth spell," No. 1 said, and his eyes glowed once more.

"Aquatic respiration, prophetic abilities, shape-shifting, mental telepathy, the list goes on," Gaea growled, looking resigned. She was now under a truth spell, and it seemed like she was giving up.

I had a question for her. "Can you use them?"

"Max," said Artemis, "I don't believe it's a good idea to test her…"

Gaea's eyes flickered and a smile came to Angel's face. Slowly, her skin sprouted white feathers, and her wings merged with her arms.

Jacob swore. "Seriously disturbing."

Slowly, she returned to normal. She had used Angel's shape-shifting power. What else could she do?

"Guys, guard your thoughts," I whispered to the others.

But I had another question. An important one.

"Is Angel still there?" I asked her, fingers curled into fists. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine," Gaea replied grudgingly. "Now let me go." She looked like she wanted to say more about our destruction, blah, blah, blah, but No. 1's spell prevented it.

Suddenly, Foaly's computer beeped. He clopped over to it, typed something on a keyboard, and the door to the Operations Booth slid open.

Another demon person stood there. He/she/it was bigger than No. 1, a lot bigger, but they were both only about up to my waist.

"Qwan," said No. 1. Ah, this was Qwan. "Sorry?"

Qwan strode over to the table, inspected Angel/Gaea, and turned to No. 1. "You had a serious lack of judgement today, No. 1."

No. 1 nodded miserably. It was like he was a kid being scolded by a parent.

Qwan clapped his clawed hands together. "We'll work out your punishment later. For now, let's transfer the goddess's soul into something a bit more stable than a centipede. I'm thinking a hamster."

No. 1 nodded, undoing the spells he'd placed on Gaea. At once, she continued ranting.

"I will access your genetic coding! I will change the course of your life! You will hear my voice for years to come!"

I froze. _Hear her voice_ …?

No. It couldn't be.

Together, No. 1 and Qwan lifted her glowing essence out of Angel. Gaea's hold on Angel was slipping, but she managed to do one last thing before she was ripped away and forced into the unsuspecting hamster.

I heard her voice in my head, echoing.

 _Kill them._


	26. The Anticlimax

I felt the trace impulses of the command, worming their way into my brain. Although she didn't have enough time to control me, Angel's power was hard to shake.

"Ignore it, guys," Annabeth coached, and I realized Gaea had tried it on everyone. Annabeth went around to each of us, making sure we were fine.

"Of course," said the older demon warlock, Qwan. No. 1 nodded, looking worried.

Holly and Artemis nodded. Emma, Jacob, Harry, and Hermione each gave a nod as well. "We're fine," Emma said.

When Annabeth reached Percy, he smiled. "No homicidal urges. You?"

"No; we're all right, then," Annabeth said, nodding.

"Talk about anticlimactic," muttered Jacob. "I was _so_ looking forward to another fight for our lives."

Annabeth gave Percy a kiss and turned to everyone with a troubled expression. "Gaea must not have figured out how to use Angel's powers in time, although I don't know why. Thoughts?"

Foaly stepped up to the question. "Before you ask, I'm fine, in case you were wondering," he said, then answered the question. "Maybe inhabiting another, more earthly being takes time to figure out. We haven't studied soul extraction and insertion as much as we could have." He shared a glance with Artemis and Holly. "Or should have."

I didn't bother to ask. "So we were lucky. Are we safe now?"

No. 1 picked opened the wire mesh of a cage and brought out a small brown rodent. "Well, you'll never be safe, if the rest of your life is like what it is so far, but safe from Gaea? Most likely."

He handed me the hamster. It looked perfectly normal, except for the glowing green eyes.

"Excess power?" Artemis guessed thoughtfully.

"Yep," said No. 1. "The hamster just barely holds her essence."

Like I cared. When Gaea the hamster tried to bite me, I handed it to Emma and turned my attention to Angel.

Angel was unconscious, but her eyelids fluttered. I lifted her head and looked at Foaly.

"When will she wake up?"

"Too soon to say," he responded. "She fainted. But we could probably wake her in one of two ways: smelling salts, or a buzz baton to the stomach."

"Are all centaurs bad at humor, or is it just you?" I snapped, not in the mood. I couldn't remember the last time I actually had been in the mood.

"Smelling salts it is, then."

He dug around in some messy desk drawers, coming over with the stuff. He revived Angel, and she sat up, blinking slowly.

"Angel?" I said. Now that she was no longer possessed, she looked even younger, making me realize how many years had passed since this moment in time.

"…Max? Why… why do you look so old?"

I hugged her, afterward looking her in the eyes carefully. "It's a long story," I said.

She frowned. "I know. Max, that woman was inside my head. I was her. I… I saw things…"

Her eyes welled with tears. I hugged her again, worried about her, worried about her stability. If there was anything I could do, anything at all…

"You're okay now, Ange," I whispered. "I came here to help the flock. I'm going to fix everything."

Angel pulled back, looking at me. "Gaea… she said things. Why are you… why are you the one always being the hero?"

I froze. That sounded oddly close to some of the things Angel had said years ago… _I want to be the leader_. I reminded myself that this was a different timeline. Plus, in this time, Angel hadn't even done any of that yet.

But what if her run-in with Gaea was the cause of her actions in her future?

Again, I had to remind myself of something Artemis had said earlier today. The modified time turner they'd created was designed to be, simply put, paradox-free. I was most likely worrying for nothing.

"I don't know, Angel," I said to her, realizing belatedly that she could read my thoughts. "It takes a lot of work to be the hero. Trust me."

She frowned deeper but didn't continue that line of conversation. "After seeing her mind, everything is dull. She was all-powerful… Max, being mortal is awful."

I stared at her, my heart breaking. Angel, my Angel, was not supposed to talk like this. There needed to be some way to fix her.

"There is a way," she said, listening to my thoughts. "The fairies have a technology called mind wiping… please, Max. There are things I want to forget."

I was stunned. Mind wiping, as in memory erasing? "Sweetie…"

But then I realized it was the best option by far. I might not have been happy with it, but she couldn't go on with this in her brain.

"Well?" I said sharply to Foaly, who jumped. He and the others all looked embarrassed to be listening.

Foaly cleared his throat. "We _could_ give her a mind wipe. Block wipes are faster, but she might miss some memories, and fine-tune wipes are more accurate, but they take longer."

"Fine-tune," I said immediately. "I don't care how long it takes."

Wordlessly, Hermione put her hand on my shoulder. I met her gaze.

Poor Angel…

 **Sorry this chapter was so anticlimactic at the start, but not everything has to be a problem. Bye!**


	27. Splitting Up

**Computer is having issues, so chapters might be few and far between.**

We gave Angel the fine-tune wipe and released her into the city. I was pretty sure that the me from the past would be sticking around to find her, so it seemed like the best option.

We watched from afar as Angel awoke on the street with no memory of anything that had happened. She looked around in confusion, probably afraid. There was no telling what would happen to her before the flock found her.

"They're moving in your direction," Holly said to me, unshielding. She was wearing a high-tech helmet, getting information from Foaly.

She and the others were keeping track of the past flock. We had to make sure the other me would find Angel. They found the flock only a block away searching frantically for Angel, so hopefully everything would go according to plan.

And go according to plan it did. The past flock found Angel, hugs were given, reprimands were shared, and we watched as they walked away down the streets of NYC. I let loose a breath I'd been holding in since before the shuttle ride.

"Finally, everything's back to normal," Jacob said, putting an arm around Emma. "Now can we go back to the apartment and watch some _Saturday Night Live_?"

"There is still more to do," Artemis said, looking out at the crowded street. "We didn't accomplish the original missions: stopping the meteor and taking care of the apocalypse organizations."

"I told you, we're _not_ doing what you said about the organizations," Harry said.

"There isn't anything else we can do," Artemis said impatiently. "There just _isn't_ any other option."

"What?" I asked, wondering if they were thinking of killing off the Apocalypticas. Which I wouldn't have a problem with.

"He wants to mind wipe everyone in their headquarters," Percy told me. "Block wipe, full scale, and transport them all into some random country. He's crazy."

I didn't get why. "Sounds pretty good to me."

Percy shook his head. "First of all, there's a chance that some of the people will get their memories back. They could restart their whole apocalypse club. Second of all, some members of the organizations might be vacationing or something, taking a day off, and we'd miss them. They'd still have their memories."

Artemis sighed like the weight of the word was on his shoulders – which it was. "Foaly monitors mind wiped people on a regular basis, and he sent me a list of every member of the organizations so we can track the missing ones down. Does that satisfy your concerns?"

"What about the innocents?" Harry asked angrily. "There could be innocent people in the building if we do the mind wipe!"

Artemis lowered his eyes. "Unless you want to spend forever and a day mind wiping people individually…"

"Artemis is right," Holly sighed softly. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

"Holly!" Harry said. "What happened to always making the bloody moral decision?"

"Oh, come on!" I interrupted, making everyone look at me. "We're wasting time. Let's just go find the Apocalypticas or whatever and mind wipe them. We're not killing them. And we're just erasing everything from the past, what, fifteen years of their memories? They can't have been an organization for longer than that."

I paused. "Right?"

"…Right," Artemis said, taking control once more. "So it most likely won't completely destroy the memories of any innocents. While it's not ideal, as I said, it the best thing we can do."

"Thanks, but I won't do it," Harry said.

Holly frowned at him. Touching her helmet, she said to Foaly, "Can you send someone up in the nearest chute with a shuttle?"

I couldn't hear the reply, but Holly nodded. "Okay."

She turned to Harry. "You can get a ride down to Haven, as long as you stick out of sight and don't pry into fairy affairs." She sounded sympathetic, despite everything.

Harry nodded and walked down the street without another word.

Hermione stared anxiously after him. "I'd go with him, but you might need wizarding magic," she said to us.

"I'll go," said Annabeth, grabbing Percy by the arm and dragging him with her. "C'mon."

He waved goodbye as she tugged him down the street.

"We need transportation," said Artemis as they disappeared from view. "The organizations' locations for their headquarters are very far away. Hermione?"

She had an answer already. "Floo powder. Apparition may not work with so many people, some of us could splinch, but the Floo Network is safer as long as we speak clearly. Although, the Floo Network is probably not connected to Muggle fireplaces, so we'd have to travel somewhere outside of the organizations' headquarters to reach them, or else connect them to the Network through the Ministry, which is improbable."

"Could you repeat that?" I asked.

"The Floo Network," said Hermione again, "a method of transportation throughout the wizarding world, by the use of fireplaces."

"I don't get it," Jacob said grumpily. He was probably still annoyed that we couldn't go watch talk shows yet.

"It doesn't matter," Artemis said dismissively. "We can get Foaly to open nearby fireplaces through the Ministry."

Holly nodded, turning on the speaker mode to her helmet. The centaur's voice came out from it, so clear it was like he was really on the street with us.

"That's going to be a tough one," he said. "Wizards are very low-tech. But I think I can manage it."

Artemis nodded. "Then all we need is a wizard-owned fireplace. Foaly?"

There was the sound of tapping on a keyboard. "Got it. The closest wizard dwelling near you is down 115th street, 228 E, apartment 2A."

"Thanks, Foaly," said Holly, cutting a glance to Artemis.

"Wait," said Emma, crossing her arms. Dim flames flickered around her curled fingers. "How _exactly_ are we supposed to do this mind wipe?"

Suddenly, I appreciated her suspicious nature.

"As Percy said earlier," Artemis said, "a block wipe. Ideally, we would set up a time stop, but that would take resources that we don't have. In addition, No. 1 is needed back in Haven, so we cannot use his abilities."

"So how do we do it?" I asked. Was it just me, or were we talking in circles?

"Foaly," Artemis and Holly simultaneously said by way of explanation. They looked at each other, and Holly gave him an affectionate punch on the arm. "Great minds think alike, Arty?"

"Next time, Holly, please don't," Artemis said, rubbing his shoulder.

"Basically, I'm the key to Artemis's plan," said Foaly to us over Holly's helmet speaker. "I'll take care of the Floo Network, which is no small task, and all you need to do for me to direct the mind wipe is wind some fiber optic around a cable at each HQ." He sounded like he was about to go on, but Holly cut him off.

"Great. So let's get going." She shielded. None of the few pedestrians nearby noticed her, since all were distracted by phones or books, and there wasn't anyone on our side of the street anyway. The whole Hollow incident had left everyone in the know as far away from the scene as possible.

"Uh, anyone remember where the wizard fireplace apartment is?" I asked, marveling at the ridiculousness of that sentence.

"115th street, 228 E, apartment 2A," Artemis said.

"Merlin, how do you _remember_ that?" Hermione asked disbelievingly. "I must have spent _hours_ memorizing numbers in Arithmancy class at Hogwarts."

Artemis opened his mouth to reply, but Holly said sarcastically, "He's a genius. He just can."

"I wasn't going to say that," Artemis complained.

"AHEM," I cut in, "can we get moving?"

"Aren't you interested in mindless banter?" Jacob muttered sarcastically.

"No," I said bluntly.

"No one is," Hermione grumbled. "Let's go."

Finally, finally, we started towards our destination of 115th street, 228 E, apartment 2A.


	28. Fireplace Jumping

We stood outside the apartment, tense with trepidation.

"Hermione should knock," Jacob suggested. "Wizard to wizard, you know?"

"I'm a witch, not a wizard," Hermione responded.

"This would be a whole lot easier if we had our own fireplace for Foaly to hook up to the Floo thing," Emma sighed.

"We don't," I reminded her.

"Who wants to knock?" Hermione asked.

This was ridiculous. "I will."

I walked up to the door and knocked loudly. No answer. I knocked again. Still no movement from inside. I peered discreetly through a small window. All the lights were out in the wizard's living room.

"Okay," I said, feeling relieved. "No one's home. That means we can break in."

The others exchanged glances.

"We're breaking in," I repeated firmly. "This is no time to be picky."

"…You're right," Holly murmured, her voice vibrating from shielding. "Let's go."

I was expecting us to have to break down the door, drawing attention from every police officer in the vicinity, but instead, Hermione muttered, " _Alohomora_ ," and the door opened on its own.

"Unlocking charm," she said by way of explanation.

We closed the door behind us, and Hermione cast a light spell to brighten the room.

"I thought wizards hate humans," Jacob said. "Why is this guy living in New York City of all places?"

"Wizards are humans too," Hermione said heatedly. "You mean _non-magic folk_. And European wizards don't socialize with them often, but I don't know a lot about American wizards. They might be different."

We found the fireplace easily.

"How does this work?" Emma asked with her arms crossed.

Hermione lifted a small box off the mantle and opened it. Inside was a shimmering silver substance that looked like dust or sand.

Without a word, she took a pinch of the powder and threw it into the fireplace. Instantly, a vibrant green fire exploded from the previously barren hearth.

The ones not expecting this took a step back, including me. Both Jacob and I swore.

"Now we say the name of where we want to go," Hermione told us. "And don't mumble."

She stepped into the flames, saying the name of our first location. One by one, the others went as well.

I was last. I didn't want to go anywhere near that fire, magical or not, but it wasn't like I had a choice.

I said the name of the first cult's headquarters and stepped into the flames.

Traveling through the Floo Network is hard to explain, much like our shared consciousness when we were trying to trap Gaea, except this time I was alone. I felt a pulling feeling, and there was roaring in my ears; something cold, like pins and needles, was against my face, and there were green spirals around me. I shut my eyes tight and pulled in my wings, but soot covered me anyway.

Just as I was beginning to lose my lunch, which I hadn't even eaten that day, I fell forward onto my hands and knees. A voice was speaking.

"…You can thank yours truly for this fireplace. You have no idea how much software I had to bypass to get it registered by the Floo Network Authority. Of course, they don't know they registered the fireplaces, but by the time they find out, you'll be done."

I groaned, standing up slowly. Soot spilled from my clothing. I wiped what I could from my eyes.

Foaly was still talking on Holly's communicator, but she muted him. "You okay, Max?" she asked. Her non-stick fairy suit had protected her from getting dirty.

I extended my wings. They were practically the same color as Fang's from all the soot.

"Yeah," I replied.

We were standing in a stately-looking hall filled with chairs, a table, and bookshelves. The fire from which we had entered bathed the room in cheerful light. It looked like any old private library, except for the charts and graphs littering the table and the PowerPoint slideshow projected on the back wall.

I didn't need to be a genius to know what they were for.

Emma picked up one sheet. "'The By-Half Plan,'" she read aloud.

Jacob picked up another. "'Toxin Strain H8E.'"

"Looks like we're in the right place," Holly said.

Artemis's eyes were illuminated by the soot on his face. They met mine, and I nodded.

"Let's get to work, then," he said.

We exited the library, but we didn't get far. There were security cameras around each corridor.

"All you need to do is wind the fiber optic around a cable," Foaly told us over Holly's helmet communications. "I'll take care of the rest – it's long and complicated, so I won't bore you with the details."

"You don't have to do anything, do you," I accused. I was coming to know the centaur's personality well.

"I have to push a button," he admitted. "But you should know that it is a very _important_ button."

"All right, Foaly," Holly interrupted. "Stop wasting time. Let's go."

Her part of the plan was the most important. She shielded, crossing the room to the camera, and twisted the fiber optic into the cable.

I didn't see why Hermione couldn't just magically do it, but apparently that "isn't a spell."

"We've got connection," Foaly announced.

Holly was on her way back when we heard footsteps. The blur in the air that was her hesitated. She opted to stay still.

I ducked back into the library with Artemis, Emma, and Jacob. Flames crept up Emma's arms subconsciously.

"You're burning me," I whispered.

She noticed, and the fire went out.

We listened from behind the door as the footsteps grew louder and closer. It had to be a whitecoat, probably someone who was working on the virus.

Images came back to me, forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut. Fire coming from the sky, a circle of people, flesh scorched to the bone, victims of their own madness. So much death, so many lives lost.

"Max? Are you okay?" Hermione whispered.

I nodded and reopened my eyes. The whitecoat was right outside the door. He or she was walking… right past us. I sighed as the footsteps faded away.

Our door opened and Holly entered, unshielding and looking relieved.

"D'Arvit, that was close," she said.

"It's about to get closer," Foaly said. "I mixed in a bit of wizard magic when creating this particular mind wipe, just to give it a bigger span, and it's going to be transmitted through the fiber optic connection very soon. I'd recommend that you all leave before four minutes are up. How do you like that, Arty?"

I didn't understand the reference, but Artemis's expression noticeably soured. "Very well," he said. "We will use the Floo Network to travel to the next location. Hermione?"

"My pleasure." She tossed a pinch of Floo powder from the box, which I just now realized she had kept with her, into the library hearth, turning the flames bright green.

"Oh, and you're in luck," Foaly added before we left, "I have Mulch ready to collect all the data these Mud Men have collected. Say goodbye to their research!"

"Who's Mulch?" I asked Artemis and Holly, who I figured knew the most about Foaly's acquaintances.

They looked at each other, then gave me identical smirks.

"You don't want to know," Holly said.

I figured as much.

 **Hello again! Sorry for not updating all summer, but then again, you weren't reading, so it doesn't matter. Anyway, I feel like I'm not giving Emma and Jacob enough screen time despite the fact that I cut down the amount of characters in the scene. This story is winding down, and once we resolve everything, I can get to writing my favorite part: the ending. Until next time!**


	29. Goodbyes

**Welcome to the final superchapter of "The Cheese Revision." I mean, "The Time Cheesiness." Well, whatever. You get what I mean.**

 **Thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed. I couldn't have done it without you.**

 **Last but not least, I would like to ask if you feel there should be an epilogue. I think I'm going to write one, but I want your input.**

 **Oh, and happy birthday to Percy Jackson! Consider this my birthday present to him!**

We took care of the rest of the places without incident. Artemis used his list of potentially dangerous organizations to make it nearly – dare I say it? – easy. It felt weird, to be honest. My life was filled with every worst-case scenario possible. This was a change I wasn't sure I knew how to deal with.

It was also weird, knowing we were changing the present. To the Time Association, it was the future.

But, finally, we were finished. For the last time, we traveled by Floo powder, coming out of the original fireplace in the wizard's vacant apartment.

Except, it wasn't vacant anymore.

A befuddled little guy with a bald head spilled his party-size Dorito bag all over his couch when we appeared. I presumed he was the wizard who lived in the apartment, at home after a day at work, assuming wizards had jobs.

"Good evening," Artemis said pleasantly to him, although technically it was past sundown. I could see he was enjoying the wizard's expression.

The man only stuttered, bug-eyed and slack-jawed.

"Sorry to bother you," Hermione apologized, ignoring Artemis. "We'll just be leaving."

"Bye," I said helpfully.

The poor guy watched us leave out the front door.

"Well, that went well," Jacob said, shaking his head. Emma frowned.

I felt like I was forgetting something. Then it hit me. We weren't done yet. "Artemis? Hey, what about the meteor? Or asteroid, meteorite, whatever," I added, just in case.

"In light of what has happened, I believe Foaly will help us with that," he said, turning to Holly. She turned up the volume on her helmet.

Foaly's voice came from the speaker. "Of course. The council won't approve, but what the council doesn't know won't hurt them."

We heard tapping on a keyboard, and then he said, "All done! Although, the repercussions of this could potentially include revealing our existence to every Mud Man government and astronomer on the planet. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

"Thank you, Foaly," Holly said sarcastically. "Now what?"

There was a pause as we realized that our goals had been completed.

"We should gather the rest of our group back in the Lower Elements," Emma said eventually, still frowning. "And then…"

"Then Max gets to go home," Jacob said plainly.

I stared at them. It had only been throughout the course of a day, but I'd gone through so much with this strange group of people. To know that it was all over at last, that I could go back to the present… it made me a little emotional. Which was weird, because I was hardly ever emotional.

"Then let's go," Hermione said, pushing me lightly. I had stopped walking, stopping the rest of them, but now we continued down the street.

I was still feeling strange. Emma nudged me with her arm.

"It's not over," she said, deadly serious. "When you get to the future, you need to make sure everything worked out okay. No dangerous virus strains, no world-ending cults, no secret magical species discovered. It's up to you at that point."

I shrugged. "For a relatively untrusting person, you have a lot of faith in me."

"It's not my decision," she said, brushing a strand of light hair out of her eyes. "And we all trust you. I didn't at first, but now I do."

"It's kind of hard to hold a grudge against someone when they help you save New York City," Jacob added with a smile.

I thought about that. They were right.

"I'll have to find a way to contact you all in the future," I said. Future? Present? It was their future and my present. I wasn't sure which word to use.

"I'd give you a fairy communicator, but I think it would break in the time tunnel," Holly said. I wasn't sure if she was joking or not.

"In our future, we should be at the same magical apartment that you found us in," Artemis said. "Just knock on the wall."

I nodded. "Sounds like a good plan, but how will I know if –"

"Harry!" Hermione shouted suddenly.

I looked ahead, and saw with surprise that Harry, Percy, and Annabeth were strolling down the street toward us. Harry was looking reluctant, but Percy raised a hand in greeting.

"And Percy and Annabeth!" he called back. "We're here, too!"

When we reached each other, Jacob turned to him and Annabeth. "Why are you here?" he asked them.

"We convinced Harry to come back," Annabeth said, flashing Harry a look.

"I don't regret anything I said," he interjected.

"It doesn't matter," Artemis said dismissively. "We finished the mind wipes. Max is ready to go back to her time."

That shut them up. Percy and Annabeth exchanged surprised glances, and Harry raised his eyebrows.

"Already?" he asked, and then frowned. "Wait, how is she supposed to get there? Her time turner is gone. We used it on Kronos."

Artemis nodded. "True, but we still have the one from our time."

"Yeah, but…" Percy said, and Annabeth's brow furrowed. A thought struck me – a thought that had most likely occurred to them as well.

"Won't I – my past self – need that one to travel… from the future… to the… past?"

I tried to think of a way to rephrase that.

"I mean, when I came here from the future, I used your time turner that I found in the ruins of your magic apartment. If I use it now, won't it be gone when I needed it in the past?"

Artemis smiled. "As I have mentioned before, our time turners do not create paradoxes. It may not make sense without studying the complex workings of time travel, but it's true. If it eases your concerns, we will leave another time turner in its place. We have more, you know."

"Okay," I said. Still confusing, but as long as it didn't rip apart the fabric of space and time, I was fine with that. "So let's go back to your magical apartment and get the time turner."

"Max, we're there already," Hermione said, pointing.

I hadn't realized it, but as we were walking, we had reached the very same alley that their invisible apartment building was located in, right on cue.

"Happy coincidence, huh?" Jacob said.

Hermione walked up to the wall and held out her wand, murmuring the spell to make the apartment appear. I remembered a time that felt like so long ago, when Harry had done the same. I had been shocked, to say the least. Now I didn't bat an eye when the brick wall melted and was replaced by a doorway.

"I'll get the time turner," Percy said, dashing inside and up the stairs.

I took in the view of the apartment. Not much had changed since this morning. I figured the others hadn't had enough time to redecorate while we were fighting Gaea.

"Some things might change in the future," said Artemis to me.

I looked at him oddly. "Uh, obviously." Normally, I would have said something like "no, duh," but coming from him, I wanted to know what his point was.

"Things relating to you," he said. "Your very memories could change once you step into the altered future. We have never made changes to the future as drastic as this, and we don't know what exactly will happen, Max."

I nodded, taking it in. "I'm fine with that."

"Thank you. I hope you will be, after you get back."

With that unsettling thought in mind, I turned to Percy, who came back down the stairs.

"Got it," he said, carrying a black leather suitcase in one hand.

Laying it on the coffee table in the center of the room, he opened the suitcase. Inside was everything that I remembered: papers, scattered notes, the time travel device, and a laptop. I pointed at the latter.

"Did you finish writing that book yet?" I asked Percy.

He raised an eyebrow. "The book I started writing this morning?"

Oh. I forgot that while it had been a year to me, they had been visited by my past self on this exact day.

"Speaking of books, I was thinking about getting a movie made about my life," Jacob said, winking at Emma. "Harry and Percy – and Hermione and Annabeth – already have movies, so why can't I?"

"You know what Hollywood is like, though," Percy said, grinning. "They totally ruined my life movie. They gave Annabeth brown hair!"

"What, you're saying you wouldn't like me with brown hair?" she asked, a hand on her hip. Percy backtracked in a hurry.

"The Mud Men moviemakers would probably give Emma air powers instead of fire," Holly said with a snort.

Emma rolled her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Maybe not movies, then," Jacob conceded. "Max, how about you write a book? Document every moment of your life or something. That could probably get on the bestseller list."

I frowned, partially at the off-topic-ness of the conversation and also because it was a stupid idea. "Fine, but how would that end? Am I supposed to write about going back in time and discovering _magic_?"

"Okay, okay, we get the sarcasm," Percy said. "Then stretch the truth, use your creative license. Maybe write as if the apocalypse actually happened without being stopped. It's not like anyone in your time would know."

I frowned to myself. Actually, it was a good idea. I could write about the dangers that we almost couldn't stop, that could still happen later in the future. And if I was making some stuff up, I could give a convenient end to Dylan (although it made me guilty just thinking about it) and mess with Total's happiness a little.

Although, Total would definitely find some form of revenge. But I was getting ahead of myself.

I smiled and nodded at Percy and Jacob. "Actually, that sounds like a really good idea. Maybe I _will_ write a book."

Percy removed the time turner from the suitcase and handed it to me. "I feel like I should say something right now, but… here you go."

I put the chain around my neck and looked at the device in my hand. It was shiny and polished, so different from the slightly battered one from my time.

I looked up at the eight members of the Time Association. Percy, Annabeth, Emma, Jacob, Harry, Hermione, Holly, and Artemis. After all that we'd been through, I trusted each of them unequivocally. I had no proof that they would survive the past and make it to the future, but I hoped that they would, and I hoped that I would be able to find them.

"Bye, Max," Annabeth said. Percy nodded with an arm around her.

Jacob was doing the same to Emma. "Write that book," he said. "Maybe you'll get a movie someday."

Hermione smiled at me. "If you don't find our future selves right away, then we will find you," she said. "Goodbye until then."

"Take care," Harry said grimly. "And please, don't get involved with mind wiping hundreds of people ever again."

I nodded, knowing I probably wouldn't, but that I would if I had to. He didn't understand that, but maybe he would over the next year.

Holly surprised me by giving me a hug. Not being a very huggy person, I stiffened, but awkwardly patted her on the back.

"I'm sorry I attacked you when I first met you," she said. "And D'Arvit, Max – be careful in the future, all right?"

Artemis was last. He gave me a nod.

"Is that it?" I asked. "Aren't you going to impart some wisdom or something?"

"I told you earlier," he said simply. "Your memories may be affected once you travel to the future. There is a possibility that whatever I say won't matter."

I frowned. Was that true? I'd thought about what he'd said, but I didn't think I would actually _lose_ memories. And how would I know if it happened?

"Well, there's only one way to find out," I said, rotating the time turner. "Uh, how many times do I have to turn it?"

"With our modified version, it matters more when you _want_ to go," he said. "Picture your time in your mind, and the time turner will do the rest."

I pictured my time, full of destruction, and realized that it would be completely different now than before. Would I be able to find my flock? I had to be able to.

Instead, I pictured the passage of time, since I couldn't visualize what my time looked like. I saw the way time went forward, and I thought about how I was from a time one year in the future. I was from the time where I went _back_ in time. I wanted to go to that moment, the moment where I vanished into the past.

And with a flash, as I looked upon the faces of the Time Association, I disappeared.


	30. Epilogue

**I own nothing but the concept of the Time Association.**

 **Epilogue**

 **Two Years Later**

A teenage girl was sipping coffee in a tacky restaurant, sitting at a table across from a dark-haired boy. The place was terrible, some sort of cross between the Wild West, a sushi restaurant, and a haunted house, but its location brought back powerful memories. Memories that Maximum Ride would not soon forget.

She was seated across from Fang, who was not even attempting to eat his sushi.

"Why here?" he asked again, gazing at her intently. There was no need for him to elaborate. One look at the misspelled words on the menu was more than enough.

Max shrugged, sliding her coffee away from her plate. "I picked at random. After our interrupted date last night, I think I need a break from the rest of the flock."

A corner of Fang's mouth turned up. "Angel's really something."

"Exactly." Max smiled. "I need time, anyway, to think about that movie deal. I know she wants me to do it, but I don't want her influencing me. Literally."

Fang glanced at his unappetizing meal, about to suggest that they go for a walk instead, when the door chimed and someone entered the restaurant.

This was unusual in two ways. First, Max and Fang were the only patrons, and had been the only patrons to eat at the restaurant in weeks. (How was it still in business?) Second, when Max looked past Fang at the entrance, she lit up with recognition.

Standing, she left their table and rushed over to the two people in the doorway, past a blonde waitress wearing a cheap cowboy hat. "Hey, what's up?"

Fang raised an eyebrow at the show of affection. Usually Max was pretty unfriendly, even to people she liked.

The short, auburn-haired girl exchanged glances with the taller young man. There was something familiar about that one, but Fang didn't know what.

"Max?" the girl said, studying her face. "It's been a while."

"We've heard you've become quite an accomplished author," the other one said. Fang might not have recognized his face, but he knew his voice. Max had spoken on the phone with them briefly a few times.

She had called them twice that he could remember. Once, a year ago, when she had awoken from a bad dream about the apocalypse. Fang didn't know how she had come to be acquainted with them, but she hadn't wanted to talk about it. And one other time – that morning.

"Of course I'm an author," Max said, narrowing her eyes. "I mean, it sounded stupid when you guys suggested it, but it kind of grew on me. Actually, Hollywood wants to make a movie out of my first book now."

"We suggested that you write a book?" the auburn-haired one asked.

Max frowned. "Yep. Don't you remember? Once I got back to my time I started writing, Holly."

Holly looked surprised. "D'Arvit – I thought your first book was published this year. Did I miss something?"

"No…" Max shook her head, frowning harder. "Wait, Artemis? When was the last time we spoke face to face?"

"When you left to go back to your own time two years ago," he said, eyebrows raised. "Maybe not for you, but it has been a long time since then."

Max's eyes widened. Then she was struck by a worrying thought – Holly and Artemis were the only ones here. "What about the others? Where are they?"

"Percy and Annabeth are at Mud Man college," Holly said. "Emma and Jacob are finishing high school. They told us to say hi."

"Harry declined the invitation to come," Artemis continued. He didn't sound upset. "Hermione is tied up at the Ministry of Magic, spending her free time reading your novel. If you would call her, she had plenty complaints about your method of plot delivery."

"It's not my fault my life makes no sense," Max grumbled, then turned to Fang. "This is my –" She hesitated, feeling that _boyfriend_ wasn't a strong enough term to convey her feelings for him. "This is Fang. Fang, this is Holly and Artemis."

Fang didn't say anything, sipping his coffee. The conversation had gotten too confusing for him to follow in the first place.

Artemis and Holly thought about saying something along the lines of "Nice to meet you," but the animosity in the air made them think better of it.

Instead, while Holly smiled awkwardly at Fang, Artemis said, "Now, Max, I am sorry to get to the point, but there is something we must address. We have let you hold onto it in case of emergencies for the past two years, one year to you, but isn't safe to have when it could be stolen and used for evil. Where is the time turner?"

Max shifted, looking down to the chain around her neck. "Right here," she said, slipping it out from under her windbreaker.

The time turner hadn't changed at all. It was still shiny, golden, and new, and Holly could feel it brimming with combined magic.

Holly considered Max. She had been wearing it on her person, so she must have been careful about guarding it. "With the proper magical protections, we could allow you to keep it…"

Max grimaced. "Not a good idea, actually. Angel tried to steal it from me twice already."

Artemis and Holly contemplated being surprised, but they settled for twin shrugs. Max handed over the time-traveling device, which Artemis pocketed.

"Now, we should probably leave," he said, glancing at the overly-eager waitress loitering hopefully nearby. "My past experience at this sorry excuse for a restaurant was horrendous, to say the least."

Holly grinned mischievously. "I don't know… Max, can we stay a while? Catch up on Mud Bird news?"

Artemis groaned. "Holly…"

Max's expression was identical to the LEP captain's. "Why not?"

She pulled over two more chairs, ignoring a very reluctant Fang and an even more reluctant Artemis. The four of them began to talk, mostly Max and Holly, but Artemis eventually decided to stop caring about the restaurant and Fang gradually became interested in the conversation. They were still talking long after Max's coffee had gone cold and the lights had begun to dim outside.

Life was by no means peaceful, but in that instant, it was perfect.


End file.
